


no matter what the storybooks say

by byrd_the_amazin



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi, Reunions, TRUE LOVE!, The Princess Bride AU, buttercup!julie, caleb is the count and he IS the worst, fencing! fighting! torture! revenge! monsters! chases! escapes!, ft. the author projecting too heavily onto both inigo and also alex, inigo!alex, nick is the prince but he's not The Worst, reggie/bobby is there if you squint your eyes and turn your head ninety degrees to the left, swords as a metaphor for being gay (not really), this is literally just me plucking up the characters and tossing them into the princess bride, westley!luke
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29481426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byrd_the_amazin/pseuds/byrd_the_amazin
Summary: Julie stifled a sob deep in her throat. “How can you be sure?”“Because this is true love,” Luke said, as if it was the simplest thing in the world, and perhaps it was. “Do you think this happens every day?"
Relationships: Alex Mercer/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms), Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Alex Mercer & Luke Patterson & Reggie Peters, Caleb Covington & Nick, Julie Molina & Nick, Julie Molina/Luke Patterson, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Comments: 65
Kudos: 80





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> if you see me writing julie and the phantoms fic in the year of our lord and savior 2021, no you absolutely do not 
> 
> this idea came to me in the middle of the night and if i actually stick this shit out i think it could be neat but don't be afraid to tell me what you think! it's been years since i've written fic i'm a tad rusty
> 
> if you're familiar with the princess bride, canon-typical warnings will apply. if you're not familiar with the princess bride, this chapter's tw include: major character death (mentioned, off-screen), descriptions of loss and grief, and a character getting knocked unconscious at the end of the chapter
> 
> hope u enjoy
> 
> here goes nothing
> 
> -b

Julie Molina grew up in the country of Florin, just beyond the outskirts of the main kingdom on a small farm where she, along with her father and brother, raised sheep and goats and hens and the like. Her favorite pastimes were riding her horse through the countryside and tormenting the farmboy her father had hired to help around the farm during the busier months. 

The farmboy’s name was Luke, but Julie never called him Luke. If she was addressing him directly, she teasingly called him “Farmboy,” but otherwise, she would just walk into the stables and begin ordering him around. At the sound of her voice, Luke’s head always snapped up, and his eyes would meet hers within an instant every time without fail. Julie tried to suppress the twisting feeling in her chest that only seemed to grow stronger each time it happened. She tried to tell herself she was just getting a kick out of ordering Luke around. 

She knew better, though. At each order she gave, teasingly or otherwise (“ _ Farmboy, polish my saddle so it shines,”  _ as she dismounted her horse, or  _ “Farmboy, fill these pails with water and carry them into the house for me, _ ” when her arms were tired from working all day), Luke would meet her eyes steadily, smile, and say in a quiet tone, “As you wish.”

_ As you wish.  _ It was all he ever said to her, and Julie found herself wishing he would say more. Wishing he wouldn’t say anything at all. Wishing he would look deep into her eyes, see how much he meant to her, and sweep her off her feet into a breathtaking kiss. 

And alright, Julie probably should have realized sooner what Luke meant to her. Somehow, it took her making her usual brand of request (this time, ordering him to patch a hole in their fence so none of the lambs got out) for Luke to reach out, silent, and brush a callused hand against her cheek. Julie’s order abruptly died in her throat, until all that came out was a helpless, “Please.”

Luke nodded, his gaze never leaving Julie’s, and murmured “As you wish,” so softly Julie almost swore he’d never spoken at all. His hand left her face, and Julie found herself mourning the loss almost immediately. He turned away to go patch the stupid fence, and Julie almost called after him. Almost ran to meet him. Instead, she turned back towards the house, shaking her head and wondering if Luke knew the effect he had on her. 

She was amazed to discover, then, that when Luke had been saying  _ As you wish, _ what he really meant to say was,  _ I love you.  _ Even more remarkable was the day Julie realized that she loved him back, truly and irreversibly and all-consumingly. 

“Farmboy,” she said, on the evening of the day that she had figured it out, and as always, her breath caught in her chest when he turned to look at her. Julie realized, somewhat belatedly, that she had no order to give him, no reason to have called for him. “Fetch me… that pitcher.”

The pitcher was hanging directly beside her head, and within reach of her left arm, but Luke didn’t say anything, didn’t argue or point out how unnecessary it was. Instead, he stepped up beside her, crowding right into her space, and reached for the pitcher. 

“As you wish,” he said, something in his eyes sparkling, and Julie couldn’t help herself. She surged forward to kiss him, and Luke barely hesitated a second before dropping the pitcher and bringing his callused, work-worn hands up to cup her face.

It was better than anything Julie could have dreamed of, the feeling of Luke’s lips pressed to hers, Luke’s hands on her jaw, thumbs making a sweeping motion over her cheekbones, and Julie could have gotten lost in the sensation forever if it hadn’t been for her brother, who appeared in the doorway with a cheerful, “Hey, I heard something break-  _ oh geez!” _

Luke and Julie leapt apart from each other as Carlos yelped and smacked a hand over his eyes, and then Luke was meeting Julie’s eyes, embarrassed at being caught but still laughing, and Julie’s heart swelled with something she couldn't quite define.

~

The next step, after so many years of darting around each other, was to get married. Julie’s father approved of Luke, and had approved of him long before either his daughter or the farmboy had any idea what was going on themselves, but Luke had no money for marriage. 

Julie tried to insist that it didn’t matter, that they could get married on the farm, that they could invite Luke’s mother and a few of their friends from town and get married in the sheep pasture. But Luke insisted, catching Julie’s hands in his own and pressing them to his heart. 

“I want to do this right,” he said in a low, earnest voice, leaning forward to press his forehead to Julie’s. They were standing on the hill overlooking the Molina’s farm, just as the sun was sinking beyond the horizon, painting the sky brilliant pinks and oranges. “I’ve wasted this much time, Julie. I want to marry you properly. I owe you that much.”

Julie tried to protest, but he pressed his mouth to hers, effectively cutting her off with a kiss that tasted a little sad and a little hopeful all at once. 

He left in the morning, a small bag over his shoulder containing his few earthly possessions. He was going across the sea to seek his fortune, and he hoped to return within the year with enough money to marry Julie properly, whatever that meant. Julie stood at the gate at the edge of their property to send him off, tears already freely falling down her cheeks, and hugged him while wishing, foolishly, that she wouldn’t have to let him go if she held on tight enough. 

“I’m afraid,” Julie whispered in his ear, “that I’m never going to see you again.”

“Don’t be afraid, Julie,” Luke replied, and Julie closed her eyes against the rush of emotion that still shot through her when Luke said her name. After so many years of her calling him  _ Farmboy  _ and him calling her nothing at all, the sound of her name on his lips still made her weak in the knees.

“What if something happens to you?” Julie asked. 

Luke’s arms, so strong from all the work on the farm over the years, tightened around her before he let her go, drawing back just enough that he could look Julie in the eyes. “Listen to me,” he said, and Julie nodded tearfully. “I will always,  _ always  _ come for you, Julie.”

Julie stifled a sob deep in her throat. “How can you be sure?”

“Because this is true love,” Luke said, as if it was the simplest thing in the world, and perhaps it was. “Do you think this happens every day?”

And then his smile was back on his face, that same troublemaker’s smile that had first drawn Julie in all those years ago, and Julie couldn’t help but smile back through her tears. He kissed her once more, an urgent, desperate thing, and then he was gone, leaving Julie at the gate with nothing but a promise, squinting after his retreating figure through a blur of salty tears. 

~

Luke never made it across the sea to his destination. 

It was pirates, they said. Pirates had attacked his sailing vessel part of the way through their journey. Pirates led by one particular Dread Pirate Roberts, who was famed far and wide for his cruel streak. The Dread Pirate Roberts attacked suddenly and without warning. The Dread Pirate Roberts was wicked with a sword and so fast, you’d never see him coming. 

The Dread Pirate Roberts never left victims alive. 

When Julie got the news that Luke had been murdered, she shut herself in her room, refusing to eat or sleep or speak to her father and brother for days. 

She thought of Luke, of his smile and the sparkle in his eyes and the way he talked to her, as if she was the only person in the world. She thought of their first kiss, surrounded by the shards of that stupid pitcher he’d dropped, and then she thought of their last kiss, right before Luke’s departure. The last kiss she would ever get from the man she loved. 

“I will never love again,” she declared to herself, after a week and a half alone in her room. Outside her door, her father and brother heard, and exchanged a look, and their hearts broke for her. 

~

Four and a half years later, Julie was approached by a prince, who had a proposal for her.

“I’m looking for a wife,” Prince Nicholas of Florin declared, and Julie wanted to shut the door in his face, but Ray Molina had raised her better, so instead, she invited him into their tiny farmhouse for a cup of tea. 

“Your Highness, I lost someone I love not too long ago,” she explained, as she sat down across the table from him after setting down two steaming mugs of homemade tea. “I swore to never love again. I’m sorry, but I cannot accept your proposal.”

Nicholas ( _ “call me Nick _ ”) leaned across the table with a look on his face Julie couldn’t quite decipher, and for a moment, bar the guards at the door who had escorted Nick here and the finery he was wearing and the fact that his boots looked like they had never seen the dust of the roads outside his kingdom, Julie imagined that she could be friends with this Nick character. 

“Truthfully, Miss Molina,” Nick said in a low voice, “I’m not looking for love, either.”

Julie frowned, a question already on her lips, but Nick held up a hand to silence her. “I’m looking for someone to marry, Miss Molina, not someone to unconditionally cherish and spend the rest of my days with. It’s for appearances, you see; I’m nearing an age where it’s concerning that a prince such as myself hasn’t found a bride yet. You will still be treated as royalty of course, and stay in the palace, but we can stay in separate wings, if you wish, and if you absolutely detest me after the wedding, we only have to see each other on public outings and special occasions and perhaps holidays.” His lips quirked upward into a mischievous grin, and Julie was reminded, in a rush, of her lost love. “There will be benefits, of course, for your father and brother. Benefits of the monetary sort.”

Julie studied the wooden grains of the table, mind racing a mile a minute. Money for her family, and a chance to live in a castle and be treated like a princess. A title. Perhaps a few fine gowns to wear. And to top it all off, Nick wasn’t looking for love, not really.

“I… I suppose,” she said haltingly, bringing her head up to meet his gaze. “I suppose I can marry you, under those conditions.”

Nick smiled cheerily at her, and for a moment, Julie’s heart sang with affection for this new friend. Then, in an instant, it all came crashing down as she imagined Luke’s face.  _ How could she betray him like this? Going off and marrying another when his memory wasn’t even freshly five years gone yet? _

She shook her head, maintained her composure, and told herself that Luke would understand.

Half a year later, on the date that marked five years since Luke had gone to sea and never returned, Prince Nicholas stood in front of his assembled people and announced that in one month’s time, he was planning on marrying Julie Molina, from the countryside. Julie stood in the softest, finest gown she had ever beheld with her own two eyes in front of the crowd of Florin’s citizens and did her best not to cry, feeling nothing but a void in her chest as she remembered Luke, and missed him fiercer than ever before. 

After the announcement, Julie retreated to her new room in the castle, which was nicer than anything she could have dreamed of, and changed out of her ceremonial gown into one more fit for riding. The guards gave her a cursory nod as she walked past, used to her constant slipping out of the castle, and gave her no trouble as she made her way to the royal stables, where her horse, which Nick had had brought from her home, was already tacked up and ready for her daily ride. 

As she rode out of the castle grounds and into the surrounding forest, Julie cried- for her lost love, for the future she was laying out for herself, for the sheer release she felt as she rode her horse deeper and deeper into the woods. She missed Luke like she would miss a limb, a piece of her that had been ripped away unceremoniously and without warning, and even now, five years later, with a new future looming over her head with her impending marriage to the prince, Julie still vowed to herself that she would never love anyone the way she had loved Luke. 

When she came across the small band of people standing in a clearing in the woods, she stopped her horse short, puzzling at their bizarre clothing, like nothing she’d seen in Florin, as well as the fact that they seemed to be walking on foot through the woods when she knew herself how far they were from civilization. 

They all turned to look at her as she approached; four young men, all of whom appeared to be armed. 

“My lady,” said the one in the front of the group, swooping into a bow that seemed, at least to Julie, overexaggerated. He had a smile that unnerved Julie for some reason that she couldn’t place, and he sported a bright red bandana on his head. “Might we have a word?”

Julie dismounted her horse, mainly to be polite, and offered a curtsy of her own. “Hello, travelers. What can I do for you?”

The tallest of the four boys stepped forward. “We need directions, my lady.”

“You’re not from around here,” Julie said. It wasn’t a question; both their clothing and their manner of speech were foreign, at least to her. Maybe Nick, as prince of his own country, would be able to identify where exactly they hailed from, but Julie hadn’t seen much outside her family’s farm growing up, and was at a loss.

The tall boy nodded in confirmation, then looked to the leader. “We’re… lost. We’re circus performers, you see, and we were wondering if you could tell us: is there a village nearby?”

Julie shook her head; they must have been from quite far out of the territory if they didn’t know where they were. “No, there’s nothing around for miles.” She could direct them to the castle, maybe, but then she wasn’t sure. Perhaps someone in the city could get them help. 

“For miles, you say?” another one of the boys asked. He was shorter, and he had a red bandana too, but his was sticking out of the pocket of his trousers. “Excellent. Then there will be no one around to hear you scream.”

Quicker than Julie could react, he drew his sword, knocking her across the head with it, and the last coherent thought she had was that at least she would get to see Luke, her love, again as the world faded to black. 

~


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “No more rhymes, I mean it,” the captain snapped, and the ship went dead silent for all of thirty seconds before Reggie whispered, “Does anyone want a peanut?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome back! and thank you so much for your sweet comments... this is my first jatp fic so i'm a tad nervous and they honestly made my night 
> 
> this chapter is a scootch longer than the first so buckle up we're getting into the plot of the princess bride now... also i've put (hesitantly) that this is going to be 8 chapters all together but i'm also the most inconsistent bitch i know so. stay tuned for that. 
> 
> tw for this chapter include: character death (mentioned, off-screen), blood, mentions of alcohol abuse, a character getting knocked unconscious, thoughts that could be perceived as suicidal idealization 
> 
> enjoy! here goes nothing
> 
> -b

“You didn’t have to hit her that hard, you know,” Alex said, in a somewhat accusatory tone.

Across the boat from him, Bobby shrugged as he secured the knot he’d been tying. “Wanted to make sure the job got done. I didn’t want to have to hit her again.” 

Alex looked down at the crumpled form of the future princess on the deck of their ship and felt briefly guilty. He knew this is what he’d signed up for, but something in him still recoiled at the thought of kidnapping innocent women from the forest. Especially innocent women who were about to become royalty. He wondered how much harsher the punishment would be if they were caught with the princess-to-be in their clutches, and wondered if their captain truly knew what he was doing. 

“Circus performers,” Bobby said disdainfully. “Couldn’t you have come up with  _ anything  _ else?”

It was Alex’s turn to shrug. “It’s not as if it matters. We just needed a few seconds of distraction time. I was thinking on the fly.”

“What’s that you’re doing with her horse?” Reggie called from the bow of the ship, directing the question towards Dante. Their captain was ripping a piece of fabric into pieces and tucking them into the horse’s saddle. As his crew watched, he stuck one final piece into the horse’s bridle strap and smacked its hindquarters, sending the creature galloping off into the woods, back in the direction the princess had come from. 

“Creating a diversion,” Dante explained as he marched across the gangplank to board his boat. “That was fabric from the uniform of an army officer of Guilder.”

“Of what?” Reggie asked in a low voice. He’d meant the question for Bobby, but Dante rolled his eyes at him and answered before Bobby had the chance to.    
  


“Guilder,” he said impatiently. “The country across the sea? Florin’s sworn enemy? When her horse reaches the castle, the prince is going to think the Guilderians have kidnapped his bride. He’ll be  _ furious, _ and it will no doubt be very funny, but we need to haul ass if we’re going to get out of here in time. We’ll dump her body on the shore of Guilder, to confirm his suspicions. No one will be the wiser, and hey, maybe if we’re real lucky, we start an all-out war.”

He sounded self-assured, confident, but Alex’s ears had caught on only one piece of his little speech. “Her _body_?” he repeated. “You didn’t say anything about killing her, Dante.”

Reggie nodded vigorously. “Just a kidnapping job. Knock her out and take her away. We can’t  _ kill  _ her.”

“Are you  _ questioning my authority? _ ” Dante asked in a dangerous tone, and Reggie maintained eye contact with him for all of ten seconds before he looked down at the deck with a quiet, “No, sir.”

“We might kill her,” Dante said decisively, marching to the back of the ship. “We might not. I haven’t decided yet. But  _ you three _ ,” and here he fixed each of his crew members with a look that could’ve frozen hell, “are not going to question me, and you’re not going to argue about what we are or aren’t going to do.  _ You  _ owe me a debt that can’t be repaid, after what your family did to me,” he said to Bobby, who looked out at the churning waves, expression unchanged but posture suddenly a lot more tense. Dante spun on Reggie next. “ _ You _ got a fresh start on this boat, just like you wanted, and you’d better not forget it. No one cares how much schooling you’ve got on a pirate ship full of criminals. And as for you _ , _ ” and Alex flinched, because he already knew what was coming. “ _ You  _ came to me begging for revenge, at such a low point that you were drinking yourself stupid daily just to get through the day. You all owe me something, and I’m going to deliver, but in the meantime, cut the chatter and do what you’re told. Got it?”

They all mumbled agreement, but once his back was turned and his focus was on steering his ship away from shore, Reggie came right up to Alex’s side. “I don’t think it’s right to kill her. No matter what Dante tells us to do.” His voice was shaking, and Alex knew that Dante had cut deep, just as he always had. 

Alex sighed. “He’s been doing this a lot longer than we have. He knows what he’s talking about. We’re not going to kill her, Reg, I promise.” Mostly, his mind was just racing with Dante’s words. It was true; he had come to the pirate captain seeking revenge on someone who had done him wrong, and he had been at such a low point he’d been getting himself drunk every day, trying to forget what had been taken from him.  _ Who  _ had been taken from him. But no amount of alcohol would erase that dreadful day from Alex’s memories, no matter how hard he tried, so Dante had been his next best bet, offering him revenge on the man who’d stolen everything from him.

“Hey, Reg,” Bobby said, sidling up to him and nudging him with an elbow. “Dante sure does seem to be in a  _ fuss. _ ” 

Reggie grinned as he caught on to what Bobby was trying to do, and replied back, “He sure likes to scream at us.”

Alex snickered; he’d been there for the development of their rhyming game, which dated back to when they were kids. Now, it served a double purpose of pissing their captain off and calming Reggie down, as he had to focus on rhyming the end of his next sentence rather than whatever had been troubling him. Bobby had thought of it; he’d been the one Reggie went to most often if something was troubling him. Alex minded his business when it came to the private affairs of his friends, but he enjoyed the game as much as they did, and liked seeing the nervous expression melt off Reggie’s face as they played.

“He probably means no harm,” Alex offered.

Reggie tilted his head, then snapped his fingers. “He’s really quite short on charm!”

“You have the gift, sir, of rhyme,” Bobby declared, and Alex had to hold back his laughter as Dante shot them a warning look from the wheel. 

“Perhaps we should continue this some other time,” Reggie said, nervously looking at their captain, but still committing to the game. 

Bobby went to check the ropes on one side of the ship, but not before tossing over his shoulder, “We should make sure there are no rocks ahead.”

“If there are, we’ll all be dead!” Reggie exclaimed, and Dante slammed a hand down on the railing of the ship. 

“No more rhymes, I mean it,” he snapped, and the ship went dead silent for all of thirty seconds before Reggie whispered, “Does anyone want a peanut?”

Alex had to clutch his sides with the effort it took not to burst out laughing, and when he met Bobby’s eye across the boat, he seemed to be in the same state. 

He was grateful to his crewmates, he really was. Dante was an ass on the best of days, but he’d offered Alex something he desperately wanted. As for the others, he’d known them most of his life; they’d grown up and caused problems together in the same small town, separated as they all entered adulthood and went their own ways, and then had all ended up aboard Dante’s ship, in an incredible stroke of either fate or luck, reconnecting with each other at last. His friends made working under Dante more bearable; Bobby made snide remarks and jabs under his breath that had Alex howling with laughter even in the worst of times during their travels, and Reggie was sweet and good at listening to whatever Alex had to say, from the dumbest and most mundane stories to memories he hadn’t shared with another soul. Not since… 

Not since he’d lost everything. 

They sailed in relative silence for a few hours, the only noises being the lapping of the waves and the creaking of the ship as they travelled out of Florin’s waters and into something deeper, darker, and more uncharted. Bobby slumped to the deck, leaned against the railing, and was out like a light within an instant. Reggie found a seat on a crate beside their unconscious prisoner, his eyes flitting towards her every few minutes or so, as if to make sure she was still breathing. Alex positioned himself at the bow of the ship, back to the sea, and busied himself by taking out a long piece of rope and practicing tying and untying his knots, which served as a practical use of his time while also giving his ever-restless hands something to do. 

Somewhere around the second hour, Alex looked behind them and noticed another sailing vessel, about the same size as Dante’s boat, trailing them at a distance. He tried to tell himself it was nothing, that there were plenty of ships out on the open sea at this time of night, but he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that they were being followed. 

Finally, on the deck, the princess-to-be stirred, and Reggie crouched to check on her. “She’s waking up,” he reported, and Dante waved a dismissive hand as he continued to steer. 

“At this rate, we’re going to reach the cliffs by dawn,” he said confidently. Alex nodded, only vaguely aware of the plan brewing in Dante’s head but understanding this to be good news. Reggie made his way to where Bobby was still slumped against the side railing and placed a hand on his shoulder, whispering something in his ear to wake him. Alex averted his eyes, suddenly feeling like he was intruding on a private moment despite the fact that they were in full view of everyone on the boat, and risked a glance behind them, scanning the dark waters for the ship that he was now quite sure was following them. 

“Stop doing that,” Dante snapped, and Alex whipped his head back around. “You’re being paranoid.”

“I think there’s someone following us,” Alex said. Dante scoffed in response, sounding completely unconcerned. 

“You won’t get away with this,” came a new voice, and all four pirates turned to see their prisoner, sitting up with much more dignity than Alex himself could have mustered, given the circumstances. 

“What was that, princess?” Dante asked. The girl’s spine seemed to stiffen. 

“I’m not a princess yet,” she said fiercely. “My name is Julie Molina, and the prince is going to find you and see you all hanged.”

Actually, that was exactly what Alex was afraid of, but Dante smiled easily. “The only neck I would be worried about on this boat is your own, Miss Molina.”

Julie gulped, visible even from across the boat, and Alex risked another glance behind them. The boat was definitely getting closer to them now. 

Dante snapped his fingers at him. “Quit it, Alex. Seriously. This is almost over. We’re almost there.”

Alex should have been relieved at his captain’s words. Instead, he thought about the ship gaining on them from behind, and the cliffs that awaited them ahead, and he felt nothing but dread.

~

The Cliffs of Insanity were aptly named, Alex would be the first to admit. 

Since he was the lightest on his feet and the most agile, Alex got the privilege of being the first one to scale the cliff face, a rope looped around his waist so he could secure it and throw down the other end for his crewmates once he reached the top. The entire way up, he was searching for handholds and places to step, listening to the voice of Dante growing more and more distant down below as his captain snapped at him to move faster. Alex was torn between praying he didn’t miss a foothold and slip, falling to his death below, and wondering how bad it would really be if he died at this point. He’d already lost all that was precious to him. What was his own life?

Regardless of his inner debate, Alex scaled the cliff in an impressive amount of time, if he did say so himself. He tied the rope in the tightest knot he knew around a rock that jutted out towards the top of the cliff, and then tossed the other end down for Dante and the others to climb. Then there was nothing to do but wait, pacing back and forth at the top as Reggie climbed in the lead, then Dante with Julie secured on his back like an infant, or perhaps a heavy bag, and then Bobby, taking up the rear behind them. 

As they climbed, Alex cast his eyes out into the water below, where the ship that he had been keeping an eye on had caught all the way up and was now docking beside theirs. 

So they were definitely being followed, then, and Alex had been right to be worried. He wished he was brave enough to say  _ I told you so  _ without worrying Dante would cut one of his fingers off to prove a point. 

As he watched, a lone figure jumped out of the pursuing boat and began to climb the rope Alex had tossed down, still a considerable distance behind Bobby but gaining rather quickly. 

This seemed like a problem. A problem that Dante was probably going to make Alex deal with, and sure enough, as soon as Bobby had cleared the top of the cliff, Dante was drawing a knife and handing it to Alex, telling him to chop the rope and then catch up with them in a minute. 

“Wait, what?” Alex demanded, as Dante hoisted Julie into a different position on his back and began to march at a brisk pace, Reggie and Bobby on his heels. 

“Cut the rope!” Dante called back. “Or let him get to the top and kill him then, I don’t give a damn. Don’t let him catch up to us. He’s seen us with the princess and he  _ cannot _ live to tell anyone about it.”

And then they were gone, leaving Alex at the top of the cliff with a knife in his hand and a decision to make. 

Almost immediately, he tossed the knife to one side. If he was going to kill this man, then he was going to do so honorably, rather than just letting him fall off a cliff to his demise. He would at least give him that; Alex Mercer was a lot of things, with a lot of mistakes under his belt, but he did believe everyone deserved a fair death, even this unnervingly athletic mystery man. 

He peered down the face of the cliff to find that said mystery man was making impressive time on the rope; he was nearly at the top now. He was wearing a mask that covered the top half of his face as well as his hair, and he wore all black, from his gloves down to his very nice looking leather boots. Alex considered him for a moment, wondering why he looked vaguely familiar, then shook his head. 

“Hello there,” he offered down the cliff. His mother had been a mostly negative presence in his life, but she had certainly taught her son manners. “Slow going?”

The man climbing let out a huff. “Look, I’m not trying to be rude, but this is taking a lot of energy, and I don’t need a distraction right now.”   
  


“Fair enough,” Alex allowed. “Sorry.”

“Thank you,” came the reply. 

Alex paced back and forth a few times in anxious silence, then peeked back over the edge. “I don’t suppose you could hurry this process along, or anything?” He wondered where his crewmates had gone. He wondered if he would be able to track them down again, once he’d dealt with this masked individual, or if Dante would rather he stay here, where he could watch the boat. 

“If you’re really in that much of a hurry, you could go on without me,” the man offered. 

Alex shook his head. “No, that’s no good. I’ve got to meet you at the top, unfortunately. You’ve put my captain in a compromising position, and he’s the one who pays me, so…”

“Understandable,” came the masked man’s response. “I would hate to get you in trouble with your boss.”

“It’s a shame you’re going to climb all this way only for me to immediately kill you once you reach the top,” Alex sighed, and the man let out a laugh. 

“That does put a damper on our relationship,” he said, and Alex couldn’t shake the nagging feeling in the back of his mind that he’d met him, somewhere along his travels. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something about the way the man spoke, the tone of voice he used, the dry laugh…

“If it makes you feel any better, I swear not to kill you until you’ve reached the top,” Alex offered. 

“Comforting! Thank you!”

“What, you don’t believe me? I could give you my word as a pirate,” Alex called down. 

The man grunted with exertion, then said, “No good. I’ve known too many pirates in my day.” Hell, the way he was dressed made Alex think he probably was also a pirate. “You’d have to swear on something important. Something you love.”

_ Something he loved?  _ Alex didn’t believe in love anymore, and when he relayed this information to the man climbing the rope, he was met with another one of those all-too-familiar dry laughs. 

“That makes two of us, then,” he said. Alex wondered who had broken this man’s heart, and if that was what had caused him to turn to piracy. Not that it was any of his business, and rather pointless, since he was going to kill this man anyways. 

Still, Alex was nothing if not an honorable swordsman, so when his masked opponent reached the top at long last, he allowed him a moment to sit and catch his breath before they dueled. As the man found a seat on a rock, chest heaving, Alex put a hand on his sword hilt and sized him up, wondering how long it would take to disarm and kill him. 

“Pardon me for asking,” he finally said, after a moment or two of silence, “and I do not mean to pry, but do you, by any chance, happen to have six fingers on your right hand?”

Alex couldn’t see his opponent’s expression under the mask, but his tone sounded both bewildered and amused when he responded. “Do you always begin conversations this way?”

Alex laughed, then sobered up almost instantly. “A six-fingered man ruined my life. He took everything I love in this world, and killed him while I was helpless to do anything about it. Forgive me, but I had to ask.”

The masked man held up his gloved hand, revealing the ordinary five fingers one would find on the average person. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“Thank you anyways,” Alex said cordially, and his opponent nodded. 

  
There was silence for a moment more, and then Alex said, “The man I loved was a swordmaker.”

The masked man waved a hand, like,  _ Go on.  _

Alex took a deep breath. He hadn’t talked about this in years, and it still sent pain shooting through his chest to think about his lost love. “He taught me everything I know about fighting with a sword. He made this one for me,” and here Alex drew his sword, a long, seamless blade attached to a golden hilt with tiny precious stones embedded in it. 

“It’s beautiful,” the masked man said. 

“I know,” Alex said softly. “It’s one-of-a-kind. He made it just for me.  _ Better than a ring,  _ he would always joke, because it was. I didn’t need a ring when I had this.”

“I’m guessing this trip down memory lane doesn’t have a happy ending,” the masked man speculated, and Alex closed his eyes to prevent the tears welling up in them from falling. He sheathed his sword with a loud  _ shink  _ and heaved a weary sigh.

“You would be correct, friend,” he answered. “An old rival came knocking on our door one night, out for vengeance. Apparently my love had made him a faulty blade early on in his swordmaking career, back when he was still a beginner. The blade broke in the middle of a duel, and the six-fingered man blamed my love for it. He came into our house in the dead of night, when we were asleep. He knocked me out cold, and when I woke up…” Alex’s voice broke as he remembered all the  _ blood  _ everywhere, the sheer panic that had shot through him as he sprinted through the house, sword drawn, screaming his name. “He was gone.” He met the masked man’s eyes, squaring his shoulders and blinking his tears away. “He left me alive. He  _ shouldn’t  _ have left me alive, but he did. I vowed, then and there, to get my revenge on the six-fingered man. One day, I’m going to look him in the eyes, tell him he killed the love of my life, and end him right there, with this sword, made by the man I loved.”

“How long has it been?” the masked man asked, in a much gentler tone than before. 

“I’ve been looking for the bastard for nearly six years, now.” He unsheathed his sword, looked at the hilt, lovingly crafted by his lost love, and shoved down his immense despair. He would have time later to dwell on things lost years ago. For now, he had a mission. “Are you ready?”

The masked man shrugged. “Ready as I’ll ever be.” He got to his feet and unsheathed his own sword. 

“You seem a decent fellow,” Alex observed, because he’d sat there through Alex’s entire spiel and had listened respectfully. “I hate to kill you.”

“You seem a decent fellow,” the man countered. “I hate to die.”

“Begin,” Alex said, because there was nothing left to say, and they stood, facing each other with their swords drawn, for a long second before Alex made the first move, striking out in two rapid strokes. 

The masked man deflected, quicker than Alex could follow with his own two eyes, and the fight was on, Alex darting in to strike and then darting backwards just as quickly. The masked man had a block for every one of Alex’s hits and managed to get in several strikes of his own that Alex deflected in the nick of time. It was  _ exhilarating. _

Alex had been an excellent swordsman even before he’d moved in with a master swordmaker, and his skills had only improved from that point on. His quest for revenge certainly hadn’t hurt matters; if anything, it had driven him to further his mastery even further, since he wanted to be absolutely sure he could take on the six-fingered man when the day came. It had been ages since Alex had gone up against someone evenly matched in swordsmanship, and he couldn’t help but laugh as they circled each other, swords clashing against each other with a ringing that was music to his ears. He must have sounded insane, laughing while swinging his sword in a fight to certain death, but his masked opponent was smiling, too, and that same spark of recognition ran down Alex’s spine again. He was certain he’d come across this man at some point in his life, but he couldn’t dwell on it too much, or he would lose the tense focus he had on the duel.

“You are  _ wonderful  _ at this,” Alex exclaimed, as he backed the masked man up a short outcropping of rocks. “I’m impressed, truly.”

“Thank you,” the man said politely, as he kicked Alex’s sword hand to one side and then vaulted over Alex’s head in a move that had Alex’s mouth hanging open. Suddenly, he was behind Alex, and Alex was the one being backed up the hill. “I’ve been practicing for quite some time.”

With those words, he smacked the butt of his sword against Alex’s dominant hand, sending his sword flying out of his grasp and into the sand several yards below. Alex backed towards it, wondering if the masked man was planning on finishing him off while he had no sword to defend himself, but instead, the masked man hurled his own sword so that it landed near Alex’s, and then did a complicated flip over to it, neatly pulling it out of the sand in the time it took Alex to retrieve his own sword. A man of honor, yes, but also a colossal show-off. 

“Who  _ are  _ you?” Alex demanded, as they crossed swords once more. 

The masked man shrugged. “No one of consequence.”

“I must know,” Alex pressed, as their swords met again with such force that they were both thrown backwards. 

“Get used to disappointment,” was all his opponent said in response, and Alex thought,  _ fair enough,  _ before his sword was being knocked out of his hands and he felt the bite of his opponent’s blade digging into his own neck. 

“Shit,” Alex breathed, all the elation from the rush of the fight leaving his body as he dropped to his knees. “Kill me quickly, won’t you? Grant me that honor.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” the masked man said, and withdrew his sword from Alex’s neck. “I would sooner destroy a stained glass window than an artist such as yourself. But I can’t have you following me.”

He drew his hand back, and right before he struck Alex in the back of the head, he heard the masked man whisper, “I’m sorry, Alex.”

And finally, Alex realized who he’d been fighting all along as all the pieces fell into place. 

“Luke, you bastard,” he muttered, and then the world around him went dark. 

~

When Alex came to his senses, the first thing he registered was the sand- in his mouth, in his nose, shoved rather deep into one of his ears, and lightly dusting his eyelashes. He pushed himself into a sitting position, rubbing his aching head and spitting out tiny grains of sand, and as soon as he was fully aware of his surroundings and how he’d managed to get here, he thought,  _ Luke _ . 

He wasn’t sure how he hadn’t seen it before. In his own defense, it  _ was  _ a rather out-of-context situation to bump into his best friend from childhood: duelling each other at the top of a treacherous cliff after both having  _ climbed  _ said treacherous cliff, as one party attempted to stop the other from pursuing… Dante? Their prisoner? Alex still wasn’t entirely sure what Luke’s goal had been. He was sure of only one thing; Luke had bested him in combat, but had left him alive, and now he was after Alex’s crew. 

With a great sigh that he thought encompassed all his feelings about the events of the day so far, Alex pulled himself to his feet. At first, he thought Luke had taken his sword, and he thought something much stronger than  _ bastard,  _ but then he spotted it, sticking out of the sand, the hilt gleaming in the midafternoon sun. He retrieved it, relieved to find that it was still as flawless as the day it had been gifted to him, and sheathed it carefully, wondering which direction his crewmates and their prisoner, and by default, Luke in a mask, had gone. 

Since both ships were still docked in the water down below, Alex figured his best bet was to head in the direction  _ away  _ from the edge of the cliffs, so he picked a direction that looked particularly trampled by four men and a young woman and started off, wondering what sort of carnage he would find along the way and hoping Luke was as merciful with the rest of Alex’s crew as he’d been with Alex himself. 

He found Reggie clutching his head and groaning at the base of a small cluster of boulders, nearly a mile from the cliff’s edge where Alex and Luke had duelled. Reggie sounded like he had a headache from hell, but at least he was alive and conscious. 

“How are you feeling?” Alex asked, dropping to a crouch at Reggie’s side. 

“Like I just got picked up and thrown into a pile of rocks,” Reggie moaned. “The world is tilting and I feel like I’m not along for the ride.”

“We’ll give it a second,” Alex suggested, readjusting his sword at his side and sitting fully in the grass beside his friend. “Do you think he’s after the princess, then?”

“Who?” Reggie asked miserably. “The man in the mask? Maybe he thinks he can get a ransom for her.”

“The man in the mask…” Alex said carefully. “Did you notice anything familiar about him?”

Reggie shook his head, still looking pained, and then gasped, his expression changing in an instant. “Wait,  _ yes.  _ He knew my  _ name, _ Alex. Who-”

“So the man in the mask is definitely Luke, right?” came a new voice, as Bobby made an appearance over the crest of the hill. His head was sporting a new bruise near his temple and there was a single gash running along his cheekbone, but otherwise he looked no worse for wear. 

“ _ Luke? _ ” Reggie repeated, looking at Bobby and then at Alex. “Are you sure? We haven’t seen him since-”

“Since we were kids,” Alex said with a nod. “I know. But it was definitely him.”

“ _ Luke, _ ” Bobby said incredulously, shaking his head. “That rascal. How do you think he ended up here?”

“How did any of us end up here?” Alex countered. “Do you think he’s after the princess?”

“He must be,” Bobby said decisively. “He probably thinks he can get a ransom for her, and if his new pirate getup is any indication of a new career path, he’ll be looking for whoever can give him the most money for her.”

“Bobby, that’s  _ vulgar, _ ” Reggie protested, and Bobby shrugged. 

“It’s true,” he said, because it was. They’d interacted with all sorts of shady characters during their time on Dante’s crew, the sort of monsters who wouldn’t bat an eye at paying an exorbitant amount of money for a young woman. Alex had never pictured  _ Luke  _ turning into one of those sorts of people, but clearly a lot had changed since they were all gangly, awkward teenagers with limbs too long for their bodies and dreams too big for their small-minded town. 

Alex considered it. “Maybe he’s got other plans. Maybe this is a personal mission for the princess, or maybe he’s just after Dante.”

“Oh!” Bobby said, as though he’d just remembered. “About that. So I have some good news that could potentially be perceived as bad, and then another piece of news that is also on the line between being good and bad. Which would you like to hear first?”

“The first one?” Reggie tried, still clutching his head, as Alex said, “The... latter?”

“First of all, Dante is dead,” Bobby said, spreading his hands as though he was delivering a grand announcement. “The masked man, who we now have identified as our old childhood pal Luke, either poisoned Dante and got away with the princess, or poisoned himself  _ and  _ Dante and got away with the princess. Either way, right after Luke knocked me out, he poisoned our captain, and now our captain is dead. Leading me to the  _ second  _ piece of news, which is: Luke got away with the princess, so now we are officially out of a job. I personally, would like to get our asses back home before anyone comes looking for the princess and finds our shady band here instead, because I don’t actually fancy hanging from my neck anytime soon.”

Reggie and Alex both just sat there for a long moment, processing Bobby’s words. 

“Did he hit you hard?” Reggie finally asked. “Are you alright?”

“That’s what we’re focusing on?” Alex demanded. His head was swimming with Bobby’s more pressing announcements: Dante was dead. Their captain was  _ dead,  _ and Luke had gotten away with the princess. Luke, who had knocked Alex, Reggie, and Bobby out cold when he could have easily killed all three of them, had left them alive but had murdered Dante. And now he was on the run with Julie Molina, the girl betrothed to the prince of Florin. 

“So… what now?” Reggie asked, looking at Bobby and then Alex in turn. Bobby shrugged, looking for all the world as though he had no idea, and turned his attention to Alex, as well. 

Alex massaged the bridge of his nose. They were going to concoct a plan to get back home, and then he needed a strong, strong drink.

~

Prince Nicholas placed his foot inside the footprints in the sand, noting how they slid back and forth, as though the two people at the top of the cliff had been dancing. Dancing, or perhaps…

“They were swordfighting,” he announced, and the assembled party of guards turned to look at him. “There were two of them, and they were both masters of their trade.” He continued to follow the footprints in the sand up a rocky outcropping and then back down again, and several times, it looked as though one of the swordfighting parties had left the ground for a moment. 

“The winner ran that direction,” Nick said finally, and their gazes all followed the direction his finger was pointing, off towards a cluster of hills and rocks in the distance. Plenty of places to hide if you were kidnapping a princess. “And the loser sat here for a while longer before running off in the same direction, perhaps to seek revenge on his opponent.” He looked up. “Whatever the case, we need to go towards Guilder. The princess and her kidnappers all went in that general direction. We’ll find more clues along the way, I’m sure.”

“Your Highness,” said his second-in-command, a smarmy sort of nobleman named Caleb whose official title was Duke but who oversaw everything the prince did while offering his (sometimes unnecessary, usually unwanted) advice. “Shall we consider that this may be an attempt by the Guilderians to start a war between nations?”

“Not until we know more,” Nick said firmly, taking his horses reins from the guard mounted beside it. His country hadn’t had any real problems with Guilder in years, and he was hesitant to consider that this could be the beginning of a war between countries. Surely there was something else going on, although Caleb had been hinting at potential Guilderian hostility for the entire journey, now, and Nick was beginning to smell something politically fishy in the air. 

“Have you considered then, Your Highness, that we might be riding into a trap?” Caleb asked. “We should be careful.”

“I’m always careful,” Nick said with a cocky grin as he swung a leg over his horse. “It’s how I’ve stayed alive so long. Now, let’s go find my bride-to-be.”

He rode off before he could see the look on the duke’s face, but he was sure it was something priceless to behold.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to inconsistent chapter lengths and no real updating schedule: the musical 
> 
> me, texting my friend at shit o clock in the morning: does it make ANY sense for the pirates and the character of westley to be childhood friends   
> me, less than a minute later: actually nvm i'm doing it this is my rodeo now
> 
> sorry i made dante such a bad dude and then immediately killed him ? canonically the man has done nothing except be gay and dance in a night club but i needed a vizzini character 
> 
> also i projected too much onto inigo montoya during my developmental years as a child and now as a whole entire adult i am projecting too much onto alex mercer so i thought i'd stick those two projections into one of those little smoothie blenders and see how it turned out and so far the smoothie is delicious


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “In that case,” said the masked man, and Julie could tell he was getting closer now. “I challenge you to a battle of wits.”
> 
> “Winner gets the princess?” 
> 
> “Winner gets the princess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> she's a bit shorter this time, apologies; trying to split the princess bride into writable chapters is proving to be a task that is yielding uneven page numbers
> 
> thank you to everyone who has already left kudos and comments i owe you my life and also my secondborn child 
> 
> tw for this chapter include: knives, minor character death
> 
> enjoy! here goes nothing
> 
> -b

Julie was quite tired of being toted around like a rag doll. 

Bad enough she’d felt trapped like a bird in a cage during her short time in the castle, where at least she was free to go anywhere she wanted and do whatever she pleased. Then she’d been kidnapped, like something out of one of her brother’s fairy tales; knocked unconscious and taken by pirates, who decided that the best course of action for their continued hostage idea would be to have her tied to their leader’s back and then carried up the face of a sheer cliff. During the scaling of the precarious and probably not professionally secured rope, another hostile had been identified: a masked man, scaling the rope behind them, who the pirate captain deduced was probably  _ also  _ after Julie. This turn of events led the captain to make the executive decision to leave one man behind to face the masked hostile. Then, when it was made clear that it hadn’t worked, he’d left another behind, and then a bit further along, the other. 

Suddenly, Julie was feeling quite popular, and in the worst way. After all the other pirates had been dispatched to try to stop this masked individual (and apparently fail), it was down to her and the captain, waiting for the masked man to catch up to them since running clearly wasn’t working for them. The captain had blindfolded Julie, which seemed like unnecessary to her, since she had no idea where she was and therefore no plans to run blind for the hills. As the masked man approached, which Julie only knew because Dante called out to him, Dante unsheathed a knife and pointed at her throat. 

“So,” Dante said, in a booming voice that had probably commanded entire crews with a single word. “It is down to you, and it is down to me.”

Julie couldn’t see the masked man, but she could hear his light footsteps in the grass as he approached. 

“If you wish her dead,” Dante warned, pressing the knife further into Julie’s skin, “then by all means, keep moving forward.” He wasn’t pushing hard enough to break skin, not yet, but Julie still inhaled sharply at the cold bite of the knife. 

The masked man stopped moving somewhat abruptly. “Let me explain,” he said, in a low voice.

Dante scoffed. “Explain? There’s nothing to explain. You’re trying to kidnap something that I’ve rightfully stolen.”

“She isn’t a  _ something, _ ” the masked man snapped, and then seemed to compose himself. “Perhaps an arrangement can be reached?”

“There won’t be an arrangement today, I’m afraid,” Dante said lightly, as if he was discussing what he planned on having for dinner. The masked man must have taken a few more steps forward, because suddenly the knife felt as though it was very close to breaking the skin of Julie’s neck. “Why are you coming closer?” Dante demanded. “You’re going to get her killed, you fool.”

Julie couldn’t help herself; she gasped, sure that any second he was going to cut her throat and then it would all be over. She wondered how long it would take her to bleed to death. She wondered if she would still be of any value dead. Mostly, she just wondered which man was going to end up with her at the end of this fight. 

“Well, if there can be no arrangement, then I suppose we are at an impasse,” the masked man said. His tone was careful, controlled, as though he’d had practice at masking his emotions, but he sounded quite sure of himself. 

“An impasse, yes,” Dante mused. “I’m afraid so. You’ve bested all three members of my crew, which probably means I can’t compete with you physically, and I’m afraid you’re just no match for my brains.”

Something in the air changed; a challenge had been issued. If Julie could have seen the masked man’s face, she imagined he would have a single eyebrow raised. “You believe yourself to be that smart?”

Dante just snorted. 

“In that case,” said the masked man, and Julie could tell he was getting closer now. “I challenge you to a battle of wits.”

“Winner gets the princess?” 

“Winner gets the princess.”

“To the death?” Dante demanded. 

The masked man only laughed.

  
The knife withdrew from Julie’s neck ever so slightly. “Explain.”

Julie considered herself a fairly intelligent young woman; all her schoolteachers had said so, and book smarts aside, she had a good head on her shoulders. So when the masked man brought out the powder he claimed was poison and then proceeded to pour it into one of the goblets of wine, Julie smelled a trick. She doubted this was truly a game of luck; the masked man wouldn’t have sounded as confident as he did if there was truly a half chance he was going to end this game dead on the ground. 

Her hypothesis was proven correct, then, when after a few minutes of frantic muttering to himself, Dante selected one of the goblets to drink from and almost immediately slumped over on the ground beside Julie, dead as dead could be. But unless her ears had mistaken her, she was quite sure the masked man had taken a drink, as well. 

“Which cup was actually poisoned?” she demanded, as she heard the masked man come around the stone table.    
  


“They were both poisoned,” he said simply, as gloved hands reached up and removed her blindfold, and suddenly she was looking into the blue eyes of her new captor. He was dressed in all black, as she’d seen from the cliff, and there was a mask concealing the top half of his face as well as his hair. “I’ve spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocane powder.”

“Who _ are _ you?” she asked, which seemed like a more relevant question than her first, but she had been distracted by the game of wits and the resulting outcome. 

“I’m no one to be trifled with,” the man said, with a half-smile on his face, as if he was making a joke to himself. “That is all you ever need to know. Come on, move quickly.” He grasped one of her hands in his gloved one and began to pull her after him, breaking into a light run with purpose, as if he knew which direction they were going. 

“Where are we going?” Julie asked, nearly tripping over her own feet as she struggled to keep up with him. 

“This way,” he said, his tone as brisk as his stride. “Now keep up, princess.”

They ran for quite a great distance, across hills and rolling fields Julie was unfamiliar with, and while her dress might have been fine for riding the previous day, it certainly wasn’t made for running at great speeds through grass and mud and rocky terrain. Finally, the masked man seemed to sense her discomfort, or perhaps hear her heavy breathing behind him, and mercifully stopped for a rest. 

Julie seated herself on a large rock and tried to settle her breathing. “If you release me,” she gasped, her lungs heaving, “then Nick will give you anything you want. Whatever you ask for ransom, you’ll get it, I swear to you.”

The man didn’t look enticed, or even concerned. Instead, he threw his head back and laughed. “You swear? Is your word supposed to mean anything to me,  _ my lady? _ ”

He used the title as if it were an insult, and Julie drew back as if he’d hit her. 

“He  _ will  _ find me,” Julie said, more bite to her tone now. “Forgive me, sir, for trying to give you a chance. The prince will find me no matter where you take me, no matter how far we go. Nick is an excellent hunter, and a better tracker. He  _ will  _ find us, and he will make your life a living hell when he does.”

“Ah, yes, your dearest love  _ Nick, _ ” the masked man said, something in his tone so bitter it made dread crawl up Julie’s spine like a thousand-legged bug. “Of course he’ll come and rescue his bride. When’s the wedding?”

Julie recoiled. “I never said he was  _ my dearest love _ . Only that he will come for me, which I’m sure of.”

The masked man looked up. “So you’re admitting that you do not love the man you’re engaged to be married to? That he doesn’t hold your heart in his hands?”

“Nick knows I don’t love him. Not like that.” Julie shifted on the rock, suddenly filled with a mixture of discomfort and deep, immense sadness as she was reminded exactly why she would never give her heart to another. 

“You don’t love him, or you’re not capable of loving him?” the masked man asked, coming right up to Julie so that he was mere inches away. 

Julie blinked. How  _ dare  _ this stranger come and kidnap her for the second time in two days, drag her through the countryside of god-knows-where, and then interrogate her about her inability to love? How  _ dare  _ he? She stood so that suddenly, they were face-to-face, and spoke in a low, dangerous tone, filled with five years of heartache and pain and devastation. 

“I have loved more deeply than a man such as yourself could ever dream,” she said venomously. “You’re nothing but a murderer and a coward and a pirate, and  _ you  _ are the one incapable of this love you speak of.” Something occurred to her, and she let out a sharp, humorless bark of a laugh. “Of course. The Dread Pirate Roberts. That’s you, isn’t it?”

Nothing in the masked man’s expression changed, but something about the set of his shoulders became more pronounced, as if he hadn’t expected to be identified so quickly. “So you figured it out.” He dipped down into a mockery of a bow. “A pleasure to be acquainted, I’m sure. What can I do for you?”

Julie’s mouth opened soundlessly and then closed again, mind racing and blood boiling with rage. Here before her stood the man responsible for taking everything from her, for murdering her love without a second thought and leaving her alone with a void in her chest that could never be filled. Here he stood, and Julie didn’t know what his intentions were or what he planned on doing to her, but suddenly she was so full of blind fury that she couldn’t stop the words from spilling out. 

“You can  _ die, _ ” she spat, “slowly and painfully, cut into thousands of pieces, for what you did to me.”

“Such a  _ tone, _ ” the Dread Pirate Roberts said, clicking his tongue disdainfully. “And such venom behind it. Why, Highness? What have I ever done to you?”

“Because you- you-” Julie tried, but found she couldn’t get the words out. She sank back down into a sitting position, utterly defeated but still enraged. “You killed the love of my life.”

The pirate seemed unconcerned. “It’s quite possible. I’ve killed a great number of people.” He began to walk around the rock Julie was seated on, casual as a breeze. “Tell me about this love of yours. Who was he? Another prince, like the one you’ve snagged now? Young and shiny and rich?”

“No,” said Julie softly. “No, he wasn’t a prince at all. He was a poor farmboy. Poor and  _ perfect,  _ with eyes the color of the sea after a storm. He was the love of my life, and we were going to be married as soon as he returned to me, and you took him away from me. You attacked his ship on the high seas, and you’re famed far and wide for not ever taking any prisoners.”

The masked man settled himself on a rock opposite Julie, stretching out his legs. His nonchalance was making Julie’s blood boil. How could they sit here and discuss Luke’s death like it was a business transaction? How could he act so unaffected when Julie’s entire life had fallen apart, and the only person capable of helping her put it back together was at the bottom of the sea?

“Well, I certainly can’t make any exceptions to the  _ no prisoners  _ rule,” he said, bringing his hands up to rest behind his head, the picture of relaxation. Julie could have killed him. “I mean, once words gets out that a pirate has gone soft, there are mutinies. Disobedient crew members. It’s rather a mess, really.” That infuriating grin was still on his face.

“Are you  _ mocking  _ my pain?” Julie cried, as her eyes filled with tears. 

“Life is pain, Highness,” the Dread Pirate Roberts shot back, sitting forward and looking at her intensely. “Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

Julie looked down at her own hands, clasped together in her lap, and willed the tears not to fall. She was exhausted, and overwhelmed, and just wanted to go home. To the castle? To the farm? She wasn’t even sure where  _ home  _ was for her. She wasn’t sure she’d felt as though any place was truly home since Luke’s death.

“So, princess, tell me about this farm boy of yours,” the Dread Pirate Roberts said, standing and stretching languidly. “Maybe I do remember him. Perhaps he left an impression on me. What was this love of yours like?”

“Don’t do this,” Julie said softly. “Don’t make me go through this again.”

The pirate shrugged, disinterest written all over his features. “Suit yourself. But for what it’s worth, I remember him.”

Julie’s head snapped up. “What?”

“Your love. I remember his ship. I remember the crew he traveled with. I remember killing him. It would have been, what, five years ago?”

_ Five years ago.  _ Unless he was getting information from elsewhere, the pirate probably wasn’t bluffing, then. Julie squeezed her eyes shut.

“Does it bother you to hear that?” the pirate asked.

“Not much you say will upset me any more than you already have,” Julie said quietly. 

“Fair enough,” the Dread Pirate Roberts said. “He died well, at least. You should know that. He didn’t try to bribe me, or blubber his way through the conversation, or something equally embarrassing. He only said  _ please. _ ”

Julie covered her mouth with one hand, willing herself not to sob out loud. 

“It caught my memory,” the pirate recalled. “The  _ please _ . Something must have been very important, that he asked for his life so quietly and calmly. And when I asked this boy just what was so important to him, he told me about a girl who possessed surpassing beauty and faithfulness.” He cast a critical look at Julie, who still had a hand clamped over her mouth. “I can only assume he meant you, princess. And then I killed him. You should bless me for doing so before he found out who you  _ really  _ are.”

Julie took her hand off her mouth, tears replaced by outrage once more. “And what exactly am I, sir?”

“Tell me,” the pirate replied, rather than answer her question, “when you found out your love was dead, how long did you wait before turning around and getting engaged to that prince? Or did it happen on the same day? Surely you gave it a week, out of respect for the dead. Exactly how unfaithful  _ were  _ you to this man who loved you so much, Julie?”   
  


Julie had had quite enough of this. She stood from her seated position so that she was once more face-to-face with her kidnapper, looked him right in the eyes, and said lowly, “You mocked me once before, and you won’t do it again. How  _ dare you?  _ I  _ died  _ that day _ ,  _ and you can die too, for all I care!”

She channeled all her grief and rage into her words, and then her arms, and with one great shove, she sent the Dread Pirate Roberts rolling down the hill. 

But before she did, just as her palms made impact with the pirate’s chest, she heard him let out the smallest noise, and then, softer, “ _ As you wish. _ ”

And then he was gone, tripping and tumbling over himself on his way down the hill, and several things locked into place in Julie’s mind. Why he seemed to know so much about Luke in particular. His infatuation with Julie, that he would track her down and bring her all this way only to talk to her about past engagements. His anger towards Nick. 

“Oh, my sweet Luke,” Julie said breathlessly, all the air in her lungs suddenly nowhere to be found. “What have I done?”

And with that, she threw herself down the hill after her love. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for teasing at a juke reunion and then decidedly not giving y'all a juke reunion. or well i did, but not really. 
> 
> in due time, my friends- this au is forcing me to put my favorite characters through the fuckin ringer and i'm enjoying it but only a little bit 
> 
> also! this monster will probably end up being more than eight chapters total but we'll burn that bridge when we get to it... i'm also trying to update the tags of this fic each chapter without giving too much away? if you're familiar with the princess bride unfortunately i won't have many surprises to offer you but if you're new to the story then holy shit buckle up bro
> 
> and as always, comments and kudos feed the author and motivate them to write the next chapter faster, so. do that. 
> 
> much love


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I meant it. We’ll be safe in the Fire Swamp.” A pause, and then Luke specified, “I will protect you in the Fire Swamp.”
> 
> “My hero,” Julie said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome back! here, have some juke 
> 
> tw for this chapter: a character getting knocked unconscious, reaction to the character death in chapter 3, discussion of torture 
> 
> here goes nothing
> 
> enjoy
> 
> -b

Nick was beginning to lose hope that he was going to find Julie alive at the end of this entire endeavor. 

First there was the initial scene of combat, at the top of the cliff, where there was clearly a winner and a loser, although both had run in the same direction, after the princess, so Nick was unsure about each party and their intentions. After that, had come another scene where there had clearly been a scuffle, and then another not too much further away. At all three places, there was a fight, evident in the footprints and impact marks in the ground, but no bodies. 

Nick frowned as he squatted at the third scene, wondering what exactly was going on. His bride-to-be had been kidnapped; this much he knew. Caleb, muttering in Nick’s left ear the entire ride over, seemed to think this was Guilderian hostility brewing, and that their taking Julie signalled the beginning of an all-out war between nations. 

Nick wasn’t so sure. His father had been taking him on hunting trips since he was very small, and it seemed to him as though the initial kidnapping had been done by a small band of independents. The several signs of struggle hinted at the possibility of mutiny within the group, in-fighting for the rights to the princess, perhaps, or sheer jealousy over another’s position, or perhaps…

Or perhaps there was an unidentified third party here, one who hadn’t been a part of the initial group of kidnappers. Someone else who knew who Julie was, and how valuable she was. 

“Your Highness,” called a guard, from several yards away. “I think you need to see this.”

As Nick approached, the first thing he noticed was the body, slumped over sideways on the ground as though he’d fallen off the rock he’d been sitting on. The second thing he noticed was the spread of food and wine on the smooth stone in front of him, almost as if he’d been sitting down for a feast, but had been interrupted by something. 

“Is he still alive?” he asked, referring to the body on the ground, which was dressed in clothing not unlike traditional Sicilian garb, but slightly more ratty and worn. A pirate, if he had to guess. 

The guard shook her head. “No signs of struggle, and no wounds on the body, but he’s dead for sure.”

Nick looked again at the food and wine, how there were two goblets full of wine that appeared to be barely touched. “Poison,” he murmured to himself. 

“Pardon, Highness?” Caleb asked, right at Nick’s side, and Nick jumped. For all his hunter’s instincts, and ability to detect danger better than anyone else he knew, Caleb had a nasty habit of sneaking up on Nick when he least expected it. 

“Poison,” Nick said louder, willing himself not to show how much Caleb had startled him. “We’re dealing with someone intelligent, then, and able to trick his opponents into eating or drinking something he himself poisoned.  _ Don’t _ ,” he added sharply, as one of the guards reached for one of the goblets of wine to sniff it experimentally. “We don’t know exactly how this pirate died. Nobody touches anything here, and we proceed with the utmost caution from here on out. The princess is in the hands of someone who knows what he’s doing, and we don’t know how far he’s willing to go. She could be in great danger.”

“Which direction should we head next, Your Highness?” Caleb asked.

Nick scanned the area for several seconds, then pointed at a section of grass that looked especially worn down. “That way. He’s traveling by foot, and he’s alone save for Julie. We might be able to catch up to them, depending on how fast they’re going.”

And with that, he swung himself back up onto his horse and nudged the creature into a gallop, wondering if he was ever going to see Julie Molina alive again.

~

Luke had been winging it up until this point. 

He hadn’t meant to use such sharp accusations against Julie, in their argument on the hilltop, but his emotions had gotten the better of him and he couldn’t stop the words from flowing out. Watching the love of his life so enraged on behalf of his own dead memory had been gratifying, he would be the first to admit, but seeing that look of utter devastation on Julie’s face and knowing he was the one who caused it? 

Getting stabbed in the chest would have hurt less. 

When Julie finally snapped and shoved him, harder than he had been expecting, old habits came to surface, and Luke found himself uttering the very words that he’d repeated time and time again for years as he’d found himself falling head over heels for Julie Molina ( _ as you wish),  _ and then he was literally falling, rolling and hitting various body parts against the rocky, muddy ground as he made his way down the side of the hill. 

As he rolled, he thought that this was his punishment, for hurting Julie. For leaving her for five long years, only to return and say vile things right to her face, while he had his mask to hide behind. He deserved worse, to be sure, but this was a fine starting point. 

He hadn’t gone out on the open seas intending to adopt the title of the most feared pirate in the civilized world, but somehow it had happened anyways. The standing Dread Pirate Roberts was compelled by Luke’s plea, and decided to show him mercy despite his reputation for never leaving prisoners alive. Luke had trained under Roberts for some time, learning essential sailing skills as well as sword fighting techniques from a man who’d dedicated his life to not getting his ass handed to him in a fight, and then the Dread Pirate Roberts had called Luke into his quarters one night after the rest of the crew had gone to bed. 

He was retiring, he told Luke, and he wanted to pass the title of Dread Pirate Roberts on to him. 

Luke had frowned, not quite understanding. “My name isn’t Roberts, though. It’s Patterson.”

The captain had sighed, then, and explained that the past three Dread Pirate Robertses had not actually been named Roberts; in fact, the original Dread Pirate Roberts had retired nearly twenty years ago, and was now living like a king off in Patagonia. The title was more honorary than anything, and he trusted that Luke could carry on his legacy without making too much of a fool of himself. 

So Luke had become the Dread Pirate Roberts, the most prominent name on the open seas, and the most revered one, at that. What he’d told Julie was true; he  _ had  _ done a number of horrible things. He’d killed entire crews of men just like him, some of whom probably had Julies at home waiting anxiously for their return, and he hadn’t felt any remorse at doing so, because he’d done it for the purposes of appearances. That much he’d said to her had been true, too; if your crew suspected you’d gone soft, they would never listen to another word you said ever again. 

So Luke had adopted his new role, and hearing Julie’s anger and bitterness at finally discovering his name, discovering that he was the Dread Pirate Roberts, who had killed Luke and therefore ruined her life, had sparked something in him that he had been shoving away for five years now. He’d told himself time and time again that he would return to Julie, just as soon as he had enough wealth to compensate for his years away, and then they could get married.

Then somehow, when Luke wasn’t paying attention, it had been four and a half years since he’d packed his things and left the Molinas’ farm. 

And then word reached him, as it tended to do when one was the biggest name in the pirating world, that the prince of Florin was getting married to a girl from the countryside. A farmgirl, beautiful and strong-willed, who had supposedly captured the prince’s heart within a single meeting. Even before Luke had demanded to know the lucky girl’s name, dread was creeping into his stomach like a case of particularly bad food poisoning. 

His stomach churned even worse, then, when one of his contacts confirmed it; Julie Molina was the princess-to-be’s name, and Luke was on a boat to Florin the next morning. 

And now here he was, coming to rest at last at the bottom of the hill his love had shoved him down, aching all over from the rocks he’d hit on the way down as well as the injuries he’d sustained fighting not one but three of his childhood best friends, and all Luke could think was,  _ What a day this was turning out to be.  _

Suddenly, a shriek and the feeling of something colliding with his already sore frame, and there was Julie, sprawled half on top of him. When Luke realized the implications of her position, and that she must have thrown herself down the hill after him, he couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face, a boyish, silly grin that he hadn’t let cross his face in five years. 

Julie was looking at him intensely, brown eyes locked on his like the most perfect shade of chestnut gleaming in the sun, and something in her expression was both shocked and elated all at once. As Luke sat up, she followed suit, hands hovering inches away from his face like she was afraid he would dissolve if she reached out and touched him. 

“Julie,” Luke whispered, wrapping a careful arm around her waist.

“Farmboy,” she whispered back. With trembling fingers, she reached up to Luke’s face and removed his mask, which had mostly come off during his tumble down the hill. She tossed it aside and cupped his face in her shaking hands, her eyes never breaking contact with his, not even for a second. 

Luke could have sat there for the rest of his life, muddy and sore all over but so, so content. Julie was here, with him, and that was all that had ever mattered, now or in the days to come.The entire earth could have burned around them, and he wouldn’t have minded. 

“Are you alright?” Luke asked in a hushed voice, as if speaking too loud would disrupt the moment and cause Julie to flee. 

“Alright?” Julie repeated. “You’re  _ alive. _ I could fall down another hill. I could  _ fly. _ You’re- I can’t believe it.”

“I told you,” Luke said. “ _ I will always come for you. _ Why didn’t you wait for me?”

“You died, Luke,” and now Julie’s eyes were shining with tears. She looked the same as the day he’d left her, wearing a finer gown and sporting more exhaustion in her eyes but still as beautiful as he remembered, crying once again because of him. 

Luke thought, somewhat foolishly, that he would move mountains and take a hundred arrows to the heart, if only to ensure that Julie Molina never cried again.

He settled for smiling, gentler than before but still much wider than he’d ever allowed while parading as a terrifying pirate captain. “Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is… delay it for a while.”

“I doubted that,” Julie said in a quiet voice. “I don’t think I’ll ever doubt it again.”

Luke laughed, because he’d missed Julie more than words could express and now here she was, whole and safe and back in his arms, where she belonged. He leaned forward, and Julie met him halfway in a kiss that curled his toes and sent his blood singing through his veins. It was a kiss that spoke of lost time and lost love, now restored. It was a wonderful kiss, worth five years of heartache, but Luke swore to himself he would never make Julie wait that long for him again, and when he told her as much, Julie laughed, a musical sound that Luke would never get tired of for as long as he lived. 

“You’d better not,” she said firmly, and pulled him back in for another kiss, just as incredible as the first, and Luke smiled into the kiss, feeling like the happiest man on earth. 

~

“The Fire Swamp,” Julie repeated, surveying the entrance to the vast stretch of marshland ahead of them.

“Yes,” said Luke, sounding a tad impatient as he tugged at their joined hands. “The Fire Swamp. We’ll be safe in there, I promise.”

“Safe from who?” Julie demanded, not allowing Luke to pull her after him. “Luke, safe from  _ who? _ You killed the pirate, I was there.”

“I killed their captain,” Luke said quietly. “I left my- I left the others alive. They could be coming after me. And there is the matter of your... fiance.”

Julie frowned. “Nick? Why would he be a problem?”

Luke cast a significant look at that contained more volumes than Julie felt like unpacking at the moment. “Your  _ prince  _ is following us, at this very moment, with a band of guards accompanying him. He’s looking for the person he believes is responsible for taking his bride-to-be away from him. Do you realize then, why we need to get out of here before that little parade gets here?”

Julie considered this; if Nick arrived to find Julie hand-in-hand with an armed man dressed in all black, he would most likely assume the worst, and however skilled Luke must have been, to take out four pirates in a row, Nick apparently had a whole host of guards with him. 

“I suppose you’re right,” she allowed, letting Luke pull her forward, closer to the entrance of the Fire Swamp. “But is this really our best bet? The  _ Fire Swamp? _ We’ll never survive in there.”

“Nonsense,” Luke said cheerfully. “You’re only saying that because no one ever has. Have a little faith.” He looked over his shoulder at Julie, and something about the oh-so-familiar boyish grin on his face sent affection shooting through her chest. 

She couldn’t help herself; she grinned right back. “You’re an ass, Luke Patterson.”

“And yet somehow, you’re still in love with me,” Luke retorted, but it was softer, the words turned up at the end as if he was questioning them. Was he… doubting her love? After all this time? After all those words Julie had spoken just moments before about her lost love and how much he had impacted her, to the point that she felt she could never truly love again? And he was  _ doubting  _ how much she loved him?

For a moment, Julie only stared at him, wondering if he was serious. “And yet somehow,” she parroted, both to reassure him and to lighten the mood, which had taken a dramatic turn, “I am still irreversibly and unchangingly in love with you.”

The tension seemed to leave Luke’s shoulders, and just like that, his smile was back on his face, playful and contagious. “I meant it. We’ll be safe in the Fire Swamp.” A pause, and then he specified, “I will protect you in the Fire Swamp.”

“My hero,” Julie said, but the way she tightened her grip on Luke’s hand contradicted the sarcasm in her tone. 

“It’s just a swamp, honestly,” Luke said, and he ended up being mostly right. 

It  _ was  _ mostly just a swamp, with a lot of low-hanging vines and trees with all manners of foliage and other plant material draped over them so they didn’t look like trees at all, but great, hulking beasts like the ones from the stories Julie’s brother liked to hear before he went to bed each night. The ground was soft, and gave slightly under their feet as they walked, and with each step further into the swamp, it became just the slightest bit darker, as they wandered further and further away from open sunlight. 

Some creature, too far up in the trees to distinguish or identify, let out a horrifying screeching sound, and Julie jumped, reaching for Luke with her other hand, as well. Luke laughed gently and continued to tug her forward. 

“It’s not that bad,” he said off-handedly, and Julie actually stopped walking to stare at him. 

“I mean,” he clarified hurriedly, “I wouldn’t get a summer home here, or anything, but the trees are quite lovely.”

Julie continued to look at him, unimpressed, for a good ten seconds before she rolled her eyes and started walking again. 

The further into the Fire Swamp they went, the darker and louder it became. Soon, what was once an animal noise every few seconds became a chorus of cries and shrieks and chirps, all coming together to form one odd, haunting song. Several minutes in, Julie felt a distinct chill go down her back, and the sensation didn’t quite leave her the entire tromp through the marshlands. 

Julie didn’t know how long it had been when Luke suddenly held out a hand to stop her in her tracks, peering down at the ground suspiciously, as if he was waiting for something. 

“What is it?” she asked softly, after a few seconds of tense silence. 

“I’m not sure,” he answered, just as quietly. “Just… watch your step.”

They began moving forward again, much more cautiously this time, and almost immediately, a plume of white-hot flame shot out of the ground, mere inches from where Julie had placed her foot. She shrieked and jumped backwards, straight into Luke, and almost sent them both tumbling to the ground. 

“Your  _ dress, _ ” Luke yelped, and Julie looked down to find flames licking up the hem of her dress. She hit the ground on pure instinct, attempting to roll and smother the flames. Luke used his own outer shirt to bat at the flames, and eventually they managed to put the fire out, both of them struggling for breath and shaking ever-so-slightly. 

“Is your leg alright?” Luke asked, holding out a hand to help her to her feet once more. 

“Fine,” she gasped out. “This dress has several layers. Horribly impractical for running, but the fire didn’t touch me. That was- I mean, the ground just  _ spit fire at us. _ ”

“It is called the Fire Swamp, my love,” Luke said, one eyebrow raised. 

“Yes, but I thought that was just a nickname _ , _ ” Julie confessed. “I didn’t think it meant that there would be literal, actual, genuine fire coming out of the ground.”

“It certainly felt literal, actual, and genuine,” Luke pointed out, and Julie swatted at him without any force. “What an adventure that was, eh? This swamp definitely keeps one on their toes.”

“What an adventure, indeed,” Julie repeated, a smile spreading across her face despite the effort she made to contain it. 

~

Considering how Luke’s luck had been going so far, he should have known it was past time for it to start running out. 

He’d successfully rescued his love from the clutches of pirates, taken care of said pirates without murdering any of his childhood best friends, and then made his way through the dreaded Fire Swamp without actually being lit on fire once. There was the small matter of the Rodent of Unusual Size, which had come entirely out of nowhere and had given him a nasty shock as well as a moderately painful wound on his shoulder, but aside from that, their trip through the Fire Swamp had been largely uneventful. 

So it only made sense, he supposed, that his luck should start changing right about the same time they left the swamp. Which is exactly what happened; Luke caught a glimpse of the beach and freedom for all of about thirty seconds before his view was obstructed by several horses, their riders dressed in finery fit for royals and unfortunately, very much armed. 

“Behind me,” he hissed at Julie, stepping between her and the prince’s detail of guards and drawing his sword, as the assembled guards parted and let through two men who, if possible, were dressed in even finer clothing.

“Surrender,” barked one of the men, who did not appear to be dressed in the guards’ uniform. 

“Is that your fiance?” Luke murmured.

He felt her fingertips on his arm; a warning not to do anything stupid as well as a comforting presence. “That’s not him. That’s the count. The other one is Nick.”

“Julie?” the other (Nick, apparently, although Luke only knew him as Prince Nicholas of Florin) asked, and unless Luke was mistaken, there was concern in his tone. “Are you alright?”

“Your Highness,” bit out the count, “if you don’t mind.” He turned back to Luke and Julie. “I  _ said, _ surrender. Now.”

Luke spread his hands, one of which was still clutching his sword. “You wish to surrender to me?” he asked, tone both arrogant and confident. It was the tone that had started many a fight when he was posing as the Dread Pirate Roberts, out on the open seas, but those had always been fights he was sure he’d win. Here, at the edge of the Fire Swamp, he was sorely outnumbered. 

The prince’s frown deepened, but the count merely rolled his eyes. “Full marks for bravery, boy, I will give you that. Surrender now, don’t be a fool.”

Shifting noises came from the woods around them; Luke suddenly had the keen sense that there were more guards hiding amongst the trees, far more than the assembled party he saw before him. He suspected that the wrong move would get himself shot straight through with an arrow. Worse, they might miss him and hit Julie. 

Julie, who he’d sworn never to hurt again. 

“I won’t say it again,” the count said impatiently. “Surrender,  _ now. _ ”

The prince started to say, “Caleb, shouldn’t we-” and then Luke heard the telltale sound of a crossbow being nocked into position, ready to shoot. 

Julie must have heard it too, because her fingers tightened on Luke’s arm before she let go of him and stepped forward, placing herself between the prince and Luke. 

“Nick,” she said, her tone careful and measured. “You have to promise not to hurt him.”

“Julie,” he said, and he really did look lost now, “what are you-”

“Swear to me,” she said firmly. “Swear to me that you won’t hurt him if I surrender and return with you.”

“Julie, are you  _ mad? _ ” Luke demanded through his teeth. Julie didn’t turn around, but she put a hand behind her. Luke reached for it, and she squeezed his hand once, twice, before letting it drop. 

“If you come with me,” Nick said slowly, “and he puts his sword down, I swear to you, no harm shall come to him.” He put up a hand solemnly, and Luke wanted to laugh. As if the honor of a prince meant anything. He’d met far too many crooked royals in his time as a pirate captain to trust anything that came out of this prince’s mouth. 

“He’s a sailor,” Julie continued. “His ship is called  _ The Revenge.  _ Swear to me you’ll see him safely aboard.”

“I do,” Nick said earnestly. “I swear, Julie.”

“Julie?” Luke asked, his voice hoarse and weak. “What are you doing?”

Julie finally turned around, then, and Luke saw that her eyes were brimming with tears. She clasped his face between her hands and began to speak, low and urgent. 

“Listen to me,” she said, and Luke nodded helplessly. “I will find you again, Luke. I will drain every ocean in this miserable world to find you again, but right now, you have to go. You  _ must _ go, and do everything they tell you. I-” and here her voice broke, shattering what was left of Luke’s battered heart into a hundred more pieces. “I thought you were dead once, and it nearly destroyed me. I couldn’t bear it if you died for real, and I could have prevented it. I  _ will  _ find you again, my love. I swear, but now you need to go.”

Luke could only nod again, words failing him at a time he needed them most. He should have told her he loved her. He should have agreed to comply, to do whatever it took to see her again. He should have told her not to fret, that their love was meant to be and he would find her again. 

He should have said her name, one last time. 

But then it was too late, and Julie was climbing on Nick’s horse, wrapping her arms around the prince’s waist and looking back at Luke one last time before Nick urged his horse into a gallop and they were gone. 

About half the assembled guards left with the prince and Julie, leaving the count and the remaining guards behind. Luke peered up at the count, who he remembered Nick calling  _ Caleb  _ at least once, and sighed heavily. 

“Come, sir,” Caleb said. “We must… get you to your  _ ship. _ ”

Luke should have suspected a trick, honestly, but his heart was riding away on the back of a prince’s horse and he couldn’t find it in himself to care. Now he was going to die, most likely slowly and painfully, and all he could think of was the fact that he hadn’t told Julie he loved her one last time. 

He settled for plastering a false smile on his face and directing it right at the count. “Come now, my good sir. We’re men of action, aren’t we? We are not liars.”

Caleb threw back his head and laughed, a sound made more unnerving by the fact that the cold look never seemed to leave his eyes. “Well said, boy. Perhaps you are not a fool, after all. Lies do not become us, do they?”

Luke nodded, smile still frozen on his face, but something caught his eye as Caleb switched his reins to his other hand, letting his right hand rest on his leg casually. 

“What is it?” the count demanded. 

Luke couldn’t think of a polite way to say  _ I think you’re a murderer, and also the man who ruined my best friend’s life, _ so he settled for, “You have six fingers on your right hand?”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Caleb sighed, sounding tired of this whole exchange. He drew back his hand -his  _ six-fingered  _ hand- and hit Luke hard across the face, hard enough to send him staggering. Through his watering eyes, Luke watched him signal another guard to hit him again, and then something dull and heavy was making contact with the back of his head, and then Luke knew no more. 

~

Luke awoke to a throbbing sensation in his recently injured arm, without the foggiest idea where he was. 

The chamber was dark, with no windows and lit only by a few torches burning in sconces along the wall. Luke seemed to be strapped to a table with heavy straps of some material he couldn’t distinguish, and he couldn’t quite turn his head far enough to take in the extent of the room, but it appeared to be full of tools- lining the walls, resting against furniture, laid out on tables. The table he was laying on was attached to a machine of some sort, but Luke could only begin to guess its function. Nothing good for him, he would wager. 

Up a short flight of stairs, a door opened, and Luke craned his neck to watch as a nervous-looking young man made his way down the stairs, carrying a tray with what appeared to be a meal and several first aid supplies laid out on it. He set the tray down on the table beside Luke, seemed to notice for the first time that Luke was awake, and jumped slightly. 

“Where am I?” Luke asked, his voice coming out as a low croak. 

The man cast a nervous look up the stairs, as if he was waiting for someone to come in after him, and then said softly, “The Pit of Despair.”

“What a name,” Luke said, slightly hysterically, to himself. The man looked towards the door once more, then took the first aid supplies off the tray and began tending to Luke’s arm wound, dabbing gently at the angry red flesh with a cloth covered in some sort of antiseptic that stung and made Luke hiss out a swear through his teeth. Experimentally, he tugged at the restraints holding him to the table, and found, to his dismay, that they appeared to be quite sturdy.

“Don’t even think about it,” his new companion said, his tone still nervous but now carrying a warning. “I know you’re thinking about escaping; you can’t, so don’t try. You’re bound too tight, and you have nowhere to go. No one knows you’re down here, and no one knows the way in except for me. Me and Cal- the count.”

“Count Covington,” Luke repeated. “Not even the prince?”

The man looked at Luke, like he wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not. “Prince Nicholas? Don’t be ridiculous. He has no idea this place even exists.”

That made sense; Luke had only interacted with Nick for a few minutes, but he didn’t seem to be the sort with creepy secret chambers for holding and potentially killing prisoners.

“So no escaping, and no hope of rescue,” Luke said, inhaling sharply as the man dabbed at his wound some more. “That  _ hurts,  _ dammit. Then is the plan to keep me here until I die?”

“Until they kill you,” agreed the man. 

“Then why bother -  _ shit, that stings, _ why bother healing my wound, if I’m going to die anyways?”

The man shrugged. “The Count insists. He wants victims to be in fine health before he breaks them.”

“Before he breaks them?” Luke repeated. “So he’s going to torture me?”

His healer didn’t say anything else, but nodded. The expression on his face was  _ miserable,  _ like he knew he was participating in the torture of innocent prisoners and he hated himself for it, and he looked sick himself, face pale and slightly discolored, like milk gone bad. 

“Well, that’s fine,” Luke said reasonably. “I can cope with torture; I’ve done it before.”

Again, the man didn’t speak, but he shook his head quickly. 

“No? You don’t think so?” Luke asked. 

“You survived the Fire Swamp,” the man said in a hushed voice. “That means you must be brave. You might last longer than the others did, but no one, and I mean  _ no one _ , withstands the Machine.”

He fixed his gaze on Luke’s face once more, eyes wide and distant and so, so sad, and Luke couldn’t help himself; he shuddered, and wondered how long, exactly, he was going to last down here in the dark. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "here, have some juke," i say, before snatching it away 
> 
> sorry everyone! stay tuned
> 
> prince humperdinck is literally the fuckin worst in the movie and i am actively trying to make nick Not The Fuckin Worst so a lot of the prince's character has been transferred over to caleb
> 
> (woo the six-fingered man bet you didn't see that one coming justice for willie 2k21)
> 
> the next chapter is finished but not edited so i have no idea when it will be up thank you so much for your continued patience and support of this baby of mine 
> 
> and as always, drop a comment if you enjoyed! they make my day and motivate me to write faster!
> 
> -b


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Because!” the woman cried, spreading her hands, disbelief written all over her face. “You had love in your hands- within reach! and you gave it all up.”
> 
> A mixture of shame and indignation hit Julie all at once. “They would have killed Luke if I hadn’t. He would have died!”
> 
> The woman scoffed. “Your true love still lives and yet here you are, an ocean away, marrying another.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome back! and as always, thanks so much for indulging me as i write *checks word count of this fic* Far Too Many Words About This Subject 
> 
> i'm not entirely happy with this chapter but i'm tired of looking at it so here you go! enjoy.
> 
> tw for this chapter include one paragraph where a character is tortured... it's not graphic and there's no blood but if you want to skip that, the paragraph starts with "and then the pain hit him" 
> 
> for my crowd who have seen the princess bride: it's that scene
> 
> for those who haven't: buckle up <3
> 
> \- b

The night she returned to the castle, Julie had a nightmare. 

She stood beside Nick in front of an assembled gathering of his people, much like the day he had announced his intentions to marry her. The dress she was wearing was as white as snow and long enough to brush the ground, with a multil-ayered train flowing out behind her. Her neck and wrists were adorned with heavy and expensive jewelry, and when she reached up to her own head, she found a dainty tiara with an attached veil. 

An outfit fit for a wedding. She had gotten married at last.

Nick reached out his hand for Julie, and she took it as he addressed his people. 

“I would like to present your new Queen, Julie of Florin,” Nick said, in a loud voice, and there was a smattering of applause. “I expect you to love her as I do, and treat her with the respect she deserves.” He led Julie forward, so that she was looking out over the people.  _ Her  _ people. She was a queen now, after all. 

Julie swallowed hard.  _ This isn’t what I want!  _ she wanted to scream. She wanted to tear her veil off, take off the fine jewelry and the gown with the train and cast them aside. She wanted to be wearing a plain work dress, back on her family farm with her father and Carlos. She wanted to be with Luke. 

_ Luke, _ she thought desperately, mind foggy with dream but still able to fixate on her love. She hoped he’d made it to his ship safely. She wanted to see him again, wanted to feel his arms around her, reassuring her that it would all be alright, that she was safe. 

But in the dream, Julie couldn’t make her limbs move the way she wanted them to. Her hands stayed frozen in place, one at her side, the other clasping Nick’s hand, calloused in all the wrong places from a life of royal hunting trips rather than manual labor on a farm. Her feet moved without her permission, taking her closer to the crowd of her subjects. As she stepped forward, the people began to kneel; first those in the front, and then the others, like a ripple effect through the crowd. 

One woman, however, positioned in the center of the crowd, did not kneel. She stood up straight, staring right at Julie, and as Julie opened her mouth to question her, she began to boo loudly. 

“ _ Boo, _ ” she hissed, loud and brash. “ _ Boo  _ to you, lady.”

Julie blinked, rather taken aback. Terrible things tended to happen to people who disrespected royalty. “Why- why are you booing me?”

“Because!” the woman cried, spreading her hands, disbelief written all over her face. “You had love in your hands-  _ within reach!  _ and you gave it all up.”

A mixture of shame and indignation hit Julie all at once. “They would have killed Luke if I hadn’t. He would have died!”

The woman scoffed. “Your true love still lives and yet here you are, an ocean away, marrying another.” She turned to the assembled people, then, and began shouting at them. “Your  _ queen _ had true love, and she gave him up! Tell me, Majesty, how many times did he save your life in the Fire Swamp? How many miles did he pursue you on foot when you had been kidnapped by pirates?”

Julie opened her mouth to respond, but the woman beat her to it. “Too many to count, that’s how many, and in return, she treated him like  _ garbage.  _ And that’s all she’ll ever be to me. So, go ahead,” she added, waving a hand airily as if she couldn’t possibly care less. “Go ahead and bow down to her, if you wish.  _ Boo  _ to you, Majesty. Some queen you are. The Queen of Garbage. The Queen of Slime. The Queen of-”

“Stop it,” Julie begged, wishing she could cover her ears, but in her dream, she couldn’t move. She simply stood there, in shock and horror, as the woman continued to shriek, louder and louder, until her wails were all Julie could hear, ringing in her ears and making her want to curl up in a ball and hide until it was over-- 

And then suddenly, she was bolting awake in her bed, alone in her suite on the easternmost side of the castle of Florin. It took her a moment, and several heaving breaths, for her to come back to herself, but then she remembered: the wedding wasn’t for another ten days. She wasn’t married to Nick yet, and she was therefore not Queen. 

As for Luke…

Her heart ached, a familiar pain at this point, to think of her love, back on his ship and far, far away from her. She thought if the events of the dream came true and she really  _ did  _ marry the prince in ten days’ time, she would be worse than the Queen of Garbage. She would be lower than scum, to leave Luke like that. 

And just like that, Julie’s mind was made up. She swung her legs around the side of her bed and stood, body thrumming with a new purpose, fueled by an energy she hadn’t felt since the Fire Swamp, with Luke at her side. 

She knew that the westernmost portion of the castle was reserved for the royal family: Nick and his younger sister as well as the standing King of Florin, Nick’s father. The day of the wedding, the king would step down from his position, as was customary, and pass the throne and crown onto Nick. Julie, by default, would become Queen of Florin, a position that had not been held by a living person in years, not since Nick’s mother had passed away. The mere thought of it was enough to make Julie break out in a cold sweat. 

Julie made her way to the western side of the castle now, seeking out her fiance. She knew he kept odd hours, signing documents and looking over agreements and treaties in his office long after the rest of the castle had gone to bed, and sure enough, when she neared the long hallway leading to his office, there was light coming from under the door. 

The guards lining the halls nodded to Julie as she passed, and she tried to acknowledge them politely while also hurrying, anxious to speak to Nick. When she reached his office door, she didn’t bother knocking. Risky, perhaps; she wasn’t royalty yet, but she figured if anyone could barge into his office unannounced, it was the woman who was to be his wife in ten days. 

Nick looked up as she came into the room, looking exhausted from his long hours of work and quite baffled to see her, here of all places. For the most part, Julie kept to her side of the castle. She took meals with the royal family, during which she was friendly to the princess and the king and cordial to Nick, but aside from those three gatherings a day, she didn’t seek Nick out. 

He was sitting at his desk now, surrounded by what truly looked like a sea of papers, all no doubt waiting for his signature and royal seal before being sent off and finalized. Julie didn’t envy him one bit, but she was on a mission: she had something to say, and if she didn’t say it now, she feared she would lose her mind. 

“Nick,” she said, breathless from her race across the castle. “We need to talk.”

Nick stood from his desk, his brow knit, and far too late, Julie remembered that she was in the presence of the prince and dipped herself into a hasty curtsey. 

“Julie,” he said, and he looked even more baffled now. “It’s quite late. What are you doing?”

“Can we talk?” she asked. “There’s something I need to say.”

“Of course,” Nick said, and Julie came further into the room, where she noticed, to her dismay, they weren’t alone in Nick’s office. 

Count Covington stood in the corner of the room, concealed from her view by the door up until this point, but very much actively listening to their conversation. His gloved hand rested casually on the hilt of his sword, and his face looked like the picture of nonchalance and disinterest, but Julie didn’t much care for the way his cold eyes were fixed on her. That man had given her an odd feeling from the first day she’d met him, and since then he had done nothing to enhance or otherwise change her opinion of him. She didn’t trust him, that much was plain enough, and he seemed to know it, but for some reason, Nick kept him around. 

Julie took a deep breath. Count or no count, she had come here to speak her mind.  _ Now or never.  _ “Nick, I cannot marry you. I love someone else.”

Nick’s frown deepened on his face. “What are you talking about? You haven’t… something’s changed? Since I proposed to you?”

“Yes,” Julie said, and then, “well, no. Yes and no.”

“Spit it out,” Caleb snapped from the corner, and Nick held up a hand in warning to him before looking back to Julie. 

“No, nothing has changed, in the sense that I was telling you the truth when you proposed to me,” Julie tried to explain. “I told you I lost someone I loved deeply: that was true. I told you I believed this man to be dead: that was true, as well. And I agreed to marry you because I thought this man that I loved was gone.” She took another deep breath, clenching her hands at her sides to ground herself. “But in the same sense, yes, something  _ has  _ changed, because the man I thought to be dead, the man that I love more than anything on this earth… is Luke. The man from the Fire Swamp.”

For a long moment after she’d finished speaking, there was silence in the office. Nick’s face did a lot of complicated things all at once, too quick for Julie to follow, before he managed to school his expression into something calm but still concerned. 

“The man who  _ kidnapped  _ you?” Caleb demanded, striding forward so that he was no longer lurking in the corner of the room. 

“The pirates kidnapped me,” Julie argued. “Luke rescued me from them.”

“And now he is gone,” Caleb said, his lip curling in a sneer. “He is gone because  _ you  _ sent him away, lady.”

“I know, but-” Julie began, but stopped when she saw Nick hold up a hand for silence, his face still cool and collected.

“Julie,” he said, sounding as though he was picking his words carefully. “I would never want to cause you harm. You know that. And this wedding was never meant to be a grand romantic gesture for either of us. You were aware of that, as well.”

Julie nodded, a tiny spark of hope springing to life in her chest for the first time since shoving Luke down a hill with all her might. 

“Consider the wedding off,” Nick said simply, as if that was the end of it. “You are free to do as you would like, Julie. I will simply ask for the royal officiant to skip the wedding vows and go straight to the coronation ceremony. I can be a bachelor king; it’s not entirely unheard of.”

“Oh,  _ Nick, _ ” Julie said, emotion seeping into her words, and in that moment, she was as grateful as she’d ever been that she had met this wonderful, gracious prince. 

Nick allowed her one quick smile before he was turning to Caleb. “Did you return Luke, then, to his ship?”

“Of course,” Caleb said, his lip beginning to curl as if he’d smelled something unpleasant. “But Your Highness, are you really thinking this through? The political benefits to being married before you become King-”

“Are not worth me ruining two lives over,” Nick said firmly, planting his hands on his desk. “Do you doubt my ability to lead this nation without a wife at my side?”

Caleb’s mouth clamped shut. “No, Your Highness.”

“And do you trust my judgement?” 

“Of course, Your Highness.”

“Then it’s settled,” Nick said, in a final sort of tone. He looked at Julie once more, and there was genuine kindness like Julie hadn’t seen in quite a long time in his eyes. “We will send word to Luke’s ship immediately.”

Julie’s heart felt so full she thought it might burst, and she clasped a hand over her mouth as she felt tears brimming in her eyes. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined this scenario working out quite so neatly, and now she would get to see Luke again-  _ her love,  _ and soon. 

“Lady,” Caleb said suddenly, and Julie turned. “Have you considered if this man even still wants you?”

Julie opened her mouth to object, to tell this dead-eyed count that of  _ course  _ her Luke still wanted her, but he cut her off before she could say a word. 

“After all,” he continued, “it was  _ you _ who left  _ him  _ at the Fire Swamp, not the other way around. You barely hesitated a minute before flinging yourself at the prince. Does your pirate even want such a woman back in his life? Pirates aren’t exactly known for their trustworthy nature, you know.”

“I- of course he wants me back,” Julie said, barely managing to control her anger. “And Luke will  _ always  _ come for me. Always. He promised.”

“He promised,” Caleb repeated, a condescending smile forming on his face. “Of course he did.”

Nick must have seen that Julie was seething with poorly concealed rage, because he cut in before either Julie or Caleb could get another word in. 

“How about a deal?” he offered. “Julie, write a letter to Luke. Better yet, write four copies, for additional security. Give these four letters to Count Covington, and he will send his four fastest ships to deliver them, one in each direction. The Dread Pirate Roberts - your Luke - is always somewhere near Florin this time of year; he can’t have gotten far. Your letters will be given to him under a white flag, and he will be offered a full pardon to come back here and sweep you off your feet. If he accepts,” and here Nick smiled, “I wish you both all the best in your lives.”

“But if he doesn’t?” Caleb asked in a nasty tone of voice. 

“Then I will ask you to reconsider my proposal,” Nick said, directly to Julie. “I will grant you this favor if you will do me the same service. If Luke refuses you, I will ask you once more to become my bride, and ultimately my Queen. Will you agree to this?”

Caleb made a sound of protest, but Nick only had eyes for Julie. She maintained eye contact for all of ten seconds before squeezing her eyes shut, inhaling deeply. 

_ If Luke refused her…  _ Julie couldn’t bear to think of it. He wouldn’t; of course he wouldn’t, because he had no reason to. Surely Luke knew why she had sent him away, at the edge of the Fire Swamp. He knew she had only done it for his protection. So he had no reason to refuse her now. 

Right?

Julie opened her eyes again to find Nick’s piercing blue eyes, just a few shades off from Luke’s, fixed on hers. 

“I… suppose I can agree, yes,” she said, with as much reluctance as she had accepted his first proposal, at a time that simultaneously felt like years ago but also mere hours ago.

Nick’s smile was more subdued this time, more understanding of their circumstances, but it was still a lovely smile, and Julie tried to smile back, knowing deep in her heart she would never truly be happy with him.

She wondered, then, how much she would hurt Nick when she vanished the night they were to be married. 

~

Deep within the forest, in a mass of gnarled, knotted trees that twisted and curved in towards each other and blotted out the sky so that the forest was dark even when the sun was at its highest and brightest, Count Covington was marching with purpose and urgency to his destination.

Beside him, going at a light jog to keep up with him, was the assistant he’d nicknamed Fuego, a young man with light hair and lighter eyes who always looked vaguely startled and slightly ill, his face paler than most and slightly off-colored. Officially, Fuego worked in the castle, and his name wasn’t really Fuego, but Caleb had come to him well over a year ago now with a plot brewing to seize the throne for himself, and he’d had a number of shiny, valuable rewards to offer Fuego if he helped Caleb achieve this goal. 

He’d happily accepted. After all, along with more money than he knew what to do with, Caleb had offered him a title: he’d promised to make Fuego a nobleman after he mounted the throne, and Fuego, who had grown up on a farm outside the kingdom of Florin without a penny to his name for most of his life, just couldn’t resist an offer like that. 

Now, he was hurrying alongside Caleb as they made their way through the forest, towards the secret underground chamber that housed only Caleb’s most special prisoners. Right now, this meant that it was being occupied by none other than the pirate formerly known as the Dread Pirate Roberts, although Fuego knew from listening to Caleb’s conversations that the young man’s name was simply Luke. 

“Fuego, the people love their prince,” Caleb mused as they made their way through the forest. 

Fuego waited for more, but Caleb seemed to be done with the thought, so he hesitantly said, “Yes, my lord.”

“And they seem to be quite taken with their new princess, as well.”

Fuego nodded slowly. “Yes, my lord,” he said again.

“So I would imagine, Fuego,” Caleb said, hand on the hilt of his sword as he walked, “that when both the princess and the prince - no, at this point they will be the king and queen, when the  _ King and Queen of Florin  _ have been murdered on the very night of their charming little wedding ceremony, the people will be quite distraught. Wouldn’t you say so?”

“Of course, my lord,” Fuego said earnestly. 

Caleb shook his head, clicking his tongue quietly. “And to think, I almost succeeded in having the princess murdered directly following the engagement announcement. If Dante had been successful, I would only have half a problem right now, but as it is, the fool went and got himself killed, and now I need to go about this carefully. The people will need to be led by someone who understands the grief,” and here Caleb moved his hand from his sword hilt to his chest, “the  _ agony,  _ of losing someone so dear.  _ Two  _ someones so dear, as a matter of fact. It only makes sense that I ascend the throne, then. To give the people what they so desperately need.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Caleb narrowed his eyes. “Fuego, are you… paying attention to me?”

“Of course, my lord.” Fuego was not, in fact, paying attention to the count. He was going over different nobleman titles in his head, trying to figure out which sounded best when paired with his name. He quite liked  _ Duke,  _ but  _ Lord  _ worked just as well. Hell, maybe he could take Caleb’s count title once Caleb was the king.

“How is our prisoner doing?” Caleb asked, in a musing sort of tone. Fuego followed his line of sight and found that they had reached their destination: a large tree, indistinguishable from those around it save for a massive knot growing out the side of it. Fuego knew from firsthand experience that pressing that knot would reveal a secret door, built into the tree and leading down into Caleb’s secret torture chamber that he’d nicknamed the Pit of Despair. 

“Almost completely healed up,” Fuego reported. He noticed, for the first time, that the tree housing the secret passageway was dead, the leaves curled and brown and the branches brittle and rotted. It made sense, since the inner parts of the tree had been carved away in order to house the doorway, but it was oddly fitting, he thought, considering what the Pit of Despair below was used for.

“Is he ready, do you think?” Caleb asked, attention still on the tree. “For the Machine?”

“I-” Fuego faltered for a second, torn between buying more time for their prisoner, who he had grown quite fond of, and telling Caleb the truth, which was that Luke’s shoulder had been in working condition for days now. “I think so, yes.” He winced, sending a silent apology down to Luke for what he was about to go through before he died, slowly and painfully, underground, with no one around to witness or mourn it. 

“Excellent,” Caleb said, and pressed the knot of the tree, revealing the passageway within. “Time for the Machine, then. Get ready for a show, Fuego.”

~

Luke spent an indiscernible amount of time drifting between wakefulness and sleep. 

He had no idea how long he’d been in the windowless room, strapped to the table, but every so often, he would come to half-consciousness, find an attendant at his bedside, dabbing at his wound with a sharp-smelling liquid that burned his angry flesh or changing his bandages, and then drift off once more, his shoulder throbbing with pain. The ROUS had really done a number on him; if he knew more about medicine or human anatomy, he might have guessed at irreparable damage to some tendon in his shoulder, but as it was, all he knew was that it hurt like nothing he’d ever felt before. Usually, the one attending to his wound was the young man with incredibly pale skin. Sometimes it was a different one, one with darker hair and sharper features, but the pale one was most common. Time and time again, Luke had tried to question him, demanding to know where he was, where Julie was, if she was safe, what the six-fingered man’s plans were regarding Luke. He hadn’t been able to get anything out of either of his attendants, but he could feel the pale one beginning to break. Perhaps the next time he visited, Luke would be able to weasel some information out of him.

Luke felt himself waking to the sound of footsteps on the stairs; more than one pair, from the sound of it. Maybe his time was finally up, and they were coming down to kill him at last. He wondered how long he would last in a fight in his sleepy, sluggish state.

He didn’t remember the dream he’d been having (lately, his entire life was starting to feel like one huge fever dream), but he remembered that Julie had been there, the sun catching in her hair and setting it alight. She had been laughing, but Luke couldn’t recall why, only that he would do whatever it took to make her laugh again. He tried to hold onto the dream, the peaceful feeling it had brought him, but to no avail; it slipped out of his mind as soon as he tried to pin it down, and he woke to the dim lighting and medicinal smell of the dark chamber he’d become familiar with over the past several… days? Weeks? He had no idea how long it had been since that day at the Fire Swamp, when Julie had looked at him with heartbreak and resolve in her eyes and had charged him to wait for her before getting on the prince’s horse and riding off.

Luke wondered where Julie was now. He hoped she was safe. He doubted her prince would hurt her, but the six-fingered man ( _ Count Covington, _ he thought) clearly had an alternate agenda. 

The footsteps stopped at the bottom of the stairs, and Luke craned his neck to see who his new visitors were. The pale young man stood there, wringing his hands anxiously, and beside him stood Caleb Covington, the man himself, who Luke had not seen since the Fire Swamp.

“So you’ve finally decided to grace me with your presence,” Luke said. He’d meant it to sound bold and unflinching, but his voice was rusty with disuse and it came out as a helpless croak instead. What a picture he must have been, weak and sleepy and tied down to the table with one of his shoulders still in recovery from a giant rat bite, with no voice and no shirt and a nasty headache that sent his vision blinking. Some Dread Pirate he was. 

“Still as insolent as the day you were born, I see,” Caleb replied, sounding completely unaffected. He was removing his riding gloves as he spoke, setting them on a desk positioned in the center of the chamber and coming over to the table Luke was tied down to. “And how are we feeling today, Mr. Patterson?”

Luke didn’t bother answering, determined not to give him the satisfaction of a response. 

“Do I have a  _ treat  _ for you today, my dear boy,” Caleb said, moving right along as if he hadn’t asked a question at all. “You get the privilege of being part of a marvelous scientific breakthrough. Fuego, if you’ll please wheel our guest over to the Machine, we can get started.”

Luke hadn’t been aware that the table he was tied down to even  _ had  _ wheels, but sure enough, the nervous-looking pale man came over and began pushing him, slowly and laboriously, across the chamber to the opposite wall, where a cluster of random machinery parts rested against the wall. 

At least, Luke had assumed they were random, but as he was pushed closer, he realized they were all interlocking; connected to form one giant machine whose purpose he could only begin to guess at. Nothing beneficial to his own health, if the unnerving smile on Count Covington’s face was any indication. 

“Yes, it’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Caleb asked, sounding quite proud of himself. “It took me half a lifetime to invent such a marvelous Machine. I’m sure you’ve discovered, boy, how much I enjoy inflicting pain. So you’re going to help me.”

_ Go to hell,  _ Luke wanted to say, but he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from the massive form of the Machine, which looked even more imposing up close. He jumped slightly as he felt something cold press against his bare chest, and looked over to find the man apparently called Fuego attaching suction cups to his chest and shoulders. The suction cups were connected to hoses, which ran all the way to the Machine, where they directly attached to the base. 

This couldn’t have been a good sign. Luke looked back at Caleb questioningly, and found no comfort in the way the man’s smile widened. 

“As it happens, at present I am conducting an experiment,” Caleb said, clasping his hands together. “I’m writing definitive documents on the subject, so I need you to be completely truthful with your feedback to me. Total honesty is  _ crucial,  _ boy. You must tell me how the Machine makes you feel. I think we’ll start on the first setting, just as a little beginner trial.”

Luke saw Fuego advancing towards him with more suction cups in his hands and tried in vain to jerk away, but he was held fast to the table, and couldn’t do more than wriggle helplessly. Fuego adopted an apologetic expression as he attached the pieces to the sides of Luke’s head, and before he darted back to Caleb’s side, he murmured, “Brace yourself.”

Luke barely had time to prepare, clenching his jaw so he didn’t bite his own tongue, before Caleb cranked a massive lever on the side of the Machine and it whirred to life, spinning and clanking and making other concerning noises. It appeared to be powered by water, Luke noted, as water began to gush forth from a pipe in the wall, causing the the main wheel of the Machine to spin faster, and he wondered-

And then the pain hit him, all at once, and his mind was emptied of any thought except  _ agony.  _ The suction cups felt like brands pulled straight from a forge, white-hot against his skin. His blood felt like it was flowing with fiery acid, churning and trying to burst forth from his body. His head pounded, and he was sure that any second, his head would explode and he would die. He  _ wanted  _ to die, to be free from this excruciating sensation of his entire body going through this all at once, and he wondered if he would ruin the count’s sadistic experiment if he didn’t even survive the first trial. He might have been screaming; he honestly wasn’t sure.

Through his red-tinged vision, Luke was vaguely aware of Caleb, standing beside the Machine and nodding to himself, as if the things he was observing about Luke’s reaction were fascinating. Fuego stood at his side, eyes averted as if he couldn’t bear to look. As Luke watched, Caleb reached out and put the lever back in its original position, and just like that, the pain faded. 

Luke’s throat felt raw; he must have been screaming. As he slumped back onto the table from where he’d been straining against the bonds tying him down, his muscles screamed with exhaustion and agony, and he let out a shuddering breath. 

“Interesting,” Caleb mused, going to the desk in the center of the chamber and sitting down gracefully, as though he didn’t have a care in the world. “As you know, boy, the concept of the suction pump is centuries old. This Machine is, at its core, just a glorified suction pump. Except instead of sucking water from your body, I’m sucking life.”

He must have seen the expression on Luke’s face, because he threw back his head and laughed. “Yes, Mr. Patterson, you heard me correctly. I put the Machine on the first setting, just now, and in doing so I sucked one year of life away from you. Someday I think we’ll go as high as  _ five  _ years, won’t that be exciting? I really don’t know how well your body would hold up to five, so we’ll start with what we have now. What experience did you have, just now? Tell me, please. And remember, this is for posterity’s sake, so be honest, and don’t forget to include details.” He dipped a pen in an inkwell sitting on the desk and leaned forward expectantly. 

Luke opened his mouth to say something, a snarky retort, perhaps, or maybe a witty comeback. All that came out of his mouth was a pitiful whimper. 

Caleb nodded, as if this had been a highly enlightening answer. “Interesting,” he mused to himself, and jotted down a note. 

~

Caleb strode down the hall of the castle briskly, feeling, for the first time in quite a while, as though his plans were finally falling into place. Not only did he have the prince’s fiancee’ lost love chained up and near death in his Pit of Despair, but the plot to murder Nick and his new bride on their wedding night and seize the throne for himself while the kingdom mourned their lost royals was coming along rather quickly, as well. All he had to do was make sure that the castle was on high alert; not for him, but for a false outside threat. No one would su

spect good, loyal Caleb Covington, who had been serving the Kings of Florin for two generations now, of any shady business, and certainly not of  _ murder.  _

He marched into the prince’s office, where Nick was seated at his desk, surrounded by a sea of papers and documents and official-looking scrolls with a frankly obscene amount of text on each. Beside the desk stood a tall man with hair the color of straw, wearing a guard’s uniform with quite a number of medals and pins on it. This was Yellin, the captain of the royal guard. 

“Your Highness,” Caleb greeted, and Nick’s face broke into a weak smile upon seeing him.  _ Foolish boy.  _

“Caleb,” he said warmly. “I apologize for being so absent, lately. It’s just-”

“Your wedding,” Caleb supplied. “Your coronation. Many things are happening at once, Your Highness. It’s been an exhausting year.” He plastered a smile on his own face that he’d mastered over the years; it was just the right amount of  _ understanding advisor  _ combined with  _ caring friend _ . “You really should be getting more rest, Nicholas.”

“I’m fine,” Nick insisted, although the bags under his eyes and the several yawns he’d suppressed since Caleb had walked into the room seemed to suggest otherwise. “I assume you know Sir Yellin, captain of the guard and the only reason any of us sleep at night. He’s helping me look over security protocol for the coronation ceremony. Is this a social visit, Caleb?”

“Unfortunately it is not,” Caleb said, filling his tone with regret. “I come to you with urgent news of an outside threat, Your Highness. A band of assassins from Guilder are en route to the castle as we speak. They plan on camping in the Thieves’ Forest and murdering you and your bride as you sleep on your wedding night.”

Nick’s eyebrows shot up; he no longer looked tired. “What?”

Yellin frowned. “And our own spy network has caught nothing of this?” he asked, stroking his mustache thoughtfully.

Caleb shook his head. “The news came directly to me as count, intelligence, and advisor to the soon-to-be King. No one else knows of this save for those of us in this room.”

“Curious indeed,” Yellin said, almost to himself. 

A small knock sounded from behind Caleb, and he spun around to find Julie standing in the doorway behind him. She was dressed in a pink gown made from a fine silk material, and her hair was pulled back from her face, showing every inch of her worried expression. 

“Nick,” she said, and then seemed to remember her manners. She curtsied and said, “Your Highness, I mean. Is there any word from Luke?”

Nick looked to Caleb, who shook his head quickly, and said to Julie, “No word from him, Julie. I’m sorry.”

“It’s still too soon,” Caleb offered. “The letters may not have even reached him yet. Have some patience, child.”

Julie seemed to steel herself, schooling her expression into something calmer, and then looked Caleb in the eyes. “He will come for me,” she said, adopting a tone of utter confidence. “I’m sure of it.”

Caleb stared deep into the dark brown of her eyes, thinking,  _ the love of your life is dying in the Pit of Despair and will never see the light of day again, and yet you speak with an arrogance only the young and foolish possess.  _

Out loud, he said, “Of course, lady.”

Julie nodded. She appeared lost in thought for a moment, and then ducked her head into another curtsy and left the room. 

“I should go after her,” Nick said apologetically, rising from his desk. “I should make sure she’s alright.” As he passed Caleb, he paused for a moment. “Caleb… you sent the letters, didn’t you?”

“On my honor,” Caleb said, holding up a hand, and Nick seemed to relax just a bit. 

“I would never question you,” he clarified. “I just wanted to double check.”

And then he was gone, out the door after his bride-to-be. 

Caleb turned back to the captain. “They will not be murdered, Captain.”

Yellin seemed to straighten his spine where he stood. “Of course not, my lord.”

“On the day of the wedding, I want the Thieves’ Forest emptied and every inhabitant arrested,” Caleb went on. The Thieves’ Forest was notorious for being the camping ground and squatting place for a number of undesirable characters, but for the most part, they left the castle and royal family alone, more interested in petty thievery and smaller, more localized crimes. 

Yellin nodded thoughtfully. “Many of them will resist being arrested, my lord. My regular squad of enforcers may not be entirely adequate.”

Caleb huffed. “Form a brute squad, then. I want the entire forest cleared out before the prince is to be wed to Lady Julie.” He looked Yellin in the eyes then, deep and intent and concentrated. “Listen to me, Captain. The prince  _ will  _ survive his wedding night, and so will his new bride.”

Yellin swallowed, looking suitably nervous. “Of course he will, my lord. They both will. I’ll make sure of it.”

“You will,” Caleb agreed. “Because the consequences if you don’t will be dire, Captain Yellin.”

Yellin gulped once more, ducked into a bow, and left the room with a bit more energy in his step than before. Caleb watched him go, amused at himself and his little charade, and wondered how long he would keep that harebrained fool of a captain around when he became King of Florin. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> f in the chat for luke he's been going through it huh
> 
> alright some things and some notes get ready 
> 
> \- first of all, i've updated the tags and the chapter count for this fic! i think 10 is a solid guess because i'm almost done writing the entire thing and eight was. not correct. i'll try to update the tags with each chapter but i'm also not trying to spoil the entire thing so we'll see how that goes 
> 
> \- yellin didn't get a creative name because i simply was not feeling creative. if you've seen tpb you know that the dude's name really is yellin and his mustache really is very yellow and very impressive. i want to be yellin when i grow up. 
> 
> \- i apologize for any confusion about the character of the albino i don't think i did a good job describing him as Very Pale in the first chapter he appeared in and i think some of y'all might have thought i was bringing willie back so i apologize for any disappointment there
> 
> \- i also made fuego evil? he also canonically has done nothing except be gay and dance in a nightclub but everyone welcome fuego, evil henchman 
> 
> \- sorry i don't have a consistent updating schedule! i have the memory of a goldfish so i don't ever remember when i've updated last? but i also crave validation so as soon as a chapter is edited i like to slap that shit onto the internet 
> 
> and as always, thank you so much for reading it really does mean the world to me and your comments make my entire day


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Are they all out and accounted for?" the captain asked.
> 
> "Not quite, sir," came the reply. "There are two pirates giving us trouble."
> 
> Two pirates. It could have been a coincidence, but Bobby doubted it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for tuning back in; this chapter is called What The Hell Is Plot, ft. A Significant Amount Of Author Projection Onto Alex's Character 
> 
> tw for this chapter include alcohol (a character gets drunk and there are mentions of alcohol abuse in his past)   
>  as well as mention of vomit and mention of a character death
> 
> and as always, enjoy! we're past the halfway point of this monster of a fic by now. home stretch, babes
> 
> -b

At long last, the day of the royal wedding finally arrived, and the kingdom of Florin was thrown into a panic as everyone rushed to get ready for the big day. The castle was alive with activity, with servants and maids and guards and royal decorators running this way and that. Arrangements were made, guests began to arrive, and more flowers than any of them had ever seen before in their lives were placed in the royal chapel, making the entire place seem like it was in bloom and filling the air with a lovely natural perfume. 

In the Thieves’ Forest, Yellin was doing his best to carry out the orders given to him by Count Covington. His guard force, along with a new group of men he’d nicknamed the Brute Squad, were methodically going door to door and rounding up all the occupants of the forest, putting them in barred wagons and carting them off to the royal dungeons. They had met some resistance, as they were expecting, but the Brute Squad added over fifty to Yellin’s ordinary forces, so he was confident in their abilities. 

Bobby hadn’t meant to join the Brute Squad, not really, but when he’d been approached by the captain of the guard and offered a position on an elite squad of soldiers whose only responsibility would be to roughhouse a few people into wagons and threaten them with horrible things if they tried to escape or fight back, he’d shrugged and said  _ why not.  _ He already did those things regularly, and his chances of getting thrown in one of those wagons himself seemed high if he refused Yellin, so he’d agreed, and now the forest was mostly empty. 

Speak of the devil, Yellin was approaching now, looking a little worse for wear, with dark shadows under his eyes from a sleepless night. “Are they all out and accounted for?” he asked. 

Bobby looked around for a moment, waiting for someone to answer, before he realized that Yellin was talking to him. “I think so, sir,” he replied. 

“Not quite,” another member of the Brute Squad said. “There are two pirates giving us trouble.”

_ Two pirates. _ It could’ve been a coincidence, but Bobby doubted it. 

“Well then, you give those pirates some trouble, for goodness’ sake,” snapped the captain. When no one made any movement, he clapped his hands, making several of the assembled men jump. “ _ Now,  _ men.  _ Move! _ ”

“I’ve got it,” Bobby offered, and everyone nodded, murmured thanks, and began to file after the wagons, heading out of the forest. He had a strong suspicion about who, exactly, was resisting arrest; he’d grown up with them, after all, and knew firsthand just how much trouble they could get themselves into. “I’ll grab them, you guys go ahead.”

“I’ll come too,” another man said. Bobby didn’t know his name, only that he’d been a criminal before joining the Brute Squad just like Bobby himself, and that was grounds enough for Bobby not to trust him. 

“I’ve got it,” Bobby tried again. “You can join the others.”

The man squinted at him, clearly not buying it. “I’ll come too,” he said firmly, “so you aren’t outnumbered. Job will get done faster that way.”

Bobby sighed, realizing there was no point in starting an argument, and led the way back into the depths of the forest. 

His suspicions had been right on the nose; when they reached the cottage where the two pirates were supposedly making trouble, he found Reggie standing outside, with his sword drawn, trying to reason with Alex, whose sword was also drawn and who appeared to be very drunk. 

“I am waiting!” Alex announced, but he didn’t seem to be speaking to Reggie. He didn’t seem to be speaking to anyone at all, and he swung his sword recklessly as he spoke, making Reggie back up with each word. “I am waiting for you, Dante! You told me to come back to the beginning, so I have. This is where I am and  _ this, _ ” and here he punctuated the word with a rather complicated flourish of his sword that left Reggie scrambling backwards, “is where I will be staying,  _ thank _ you very much. I will not be moved.”

His words were as slurred as Bobby had ever heard them, and his movements were choppy and awkward. Definitely drunk; Bobby could smell the brandy from where he stood. 

“Hello, there,” the soldier who’d accompanied Bobby said, and for the first time, Reggie seemed to notice Bobby and the other man standing there. Relief washed over his face, but there was still a hint of nervousness there as Alex continued to swing his sword around, spouting nonsense. Alex was the best swordsman out of all of them, and even drunk, Bobby knew they didn’t have a chance in hell at beating him. Reggie was right to look slightly terrified; Alex may have been intoxicated, but that didn’t make his sword any less sharp. 

Alex noticed them, too. “I am not moving!” he announced. “I do not budge. Keep your ‘hello, there.’”

The Brute Squad member attempted to step forward, but Alex held out his sword, and he stopped moving abruptly. At least the man had a sense of self-preservation. 

“Captain Yellin has given us orders-” the man tried, but Alex cut him off, jabbing his sword in the man’s direction for emphasis. 

“So did  _ my  _ captain,” he snapped. “When a job goes wrong, you go back to the beginning. And he gave me a _ job.  _ And he gave me a chance at  _ revenge.  _ And this is the beginning, and here I will stay until Dante comes back.”

The Brute Squad member looked at Bobby helplessly. “What should we do? Do you want to both try and get him at once?”

“Bobby,” Reggie said warningly, holding out a hand as if he was worried Bobby was going to do something stupid, like charge him or, God forbid, Alex. Bobby wanted to let out an incredulous laugh.  _ Him,  _ charge  _ Alex? _ A ridiculous notion if Bobby had any hope of making it to his next birthday. 

“I am  _ waiting  _ for Dante, and I am  _ waiting  _ for the six-fingered man, and I am  _ waiting, _ ” Alex cried, and then paused, a distant expression coming over his face. “I have been waiting so long, and I am so tired.”

Bobby knew what he was thinking about.  _ Who  _ he was thinking about, and despite the frustration of the current situation, his heart broke for his friend. 

He didn’t need to think much more; his loyalties had rested with these fools since they’d met, all those years ago, and they continued to rest just there; with his best friends, and no one else. Bobby drew his own sword in one quick motion, twisting his wrist so that the hard metal pommel was facing outward, and swung it wide, catching his fellow Brute Squad member in the back of the head and sending him crumpling to the ground. 

“Thank goodness,” Reggie sighed, lowering his own sword a fraction of an inch. “Where have you  _ been? _ ”

It had been a couple weeks since the events of the kidnapping and all that came after it, and during that time, Bobby had joined a Brute Squad, gotten into three physical altercations with other thieves and two with fellow Brute members, and somehow lost track of Alex and Reggie. He supposed it made sense that they’d been squatting here, in the tiny cottage where they’d first met Dante and joined his makeshift crew.

“Here and there,” Bobby said vaguely. He looked at Alex. “You look terrible, my friend.”

Alex let out a snort, then hiccupped. His sword was still drawn, but he wasn’t jabbing it around anymore, and Bobby lowered his own sword, no longer worried about getting impaled. 

“You also smell terrible,” Reggie added. “You haven’t been this bad in months, ‘Lex. What happened?”

Alex hiccupped again. “‘M fine, I already told you. Fine, fine, fine.”

“I can see that,” Bobby replied, not convinced. He’d known, of course, that before Dante had offered them all jobs, they’d all been in a low place in their lives. He just hadn’t quite imagined  _ how  _ low; this version of Alex, who was usually the level-headed and logical one of their little band, was irrational, and impulsive, and terrifying to behold. Yet another reminder, Bobby thought to himself, of all that had been taken from Alex by this six-fingered villain. 

“Fine as I’ve ever been,” Alex said, and dropped his sword to the ground with a clatter.

“Catch him,” Reggie yelped, and then Alex was slumping sideways into Bobby’s arms, no longer conscious. 

“It’s bad,” Reggie said softly, even though Alex could no longer hear them. “It’s the worst I’ve ever seen it, Bobby. He’s not doing well.”

Something occurred to Bobby, and he readjusted his arms so that Alex was leaning against him in a more comfortable position. “What month is it?”

“What?” Reggie asked, clearly not following. “I haven’t been paying attention, honestly. August, maybe?”

“Summertime,” Bobby mused. “Alex’s… his person was born in the summertime, I think. Or at least they celebrated in the summer. When they lived together.” 

Neither he nor Reggie had ever met the famed Willie; they had already parted from Alex at that point in their lives and hadn’t yet reconnected on Dante’s crew. Alex didn’t talk about him often, the memories either too painful or too traumatizing to recall, but when he got very tired or very drunk, he would talk for hours about the love of his life, and how talented and compassionate and beautiful he had been. Always in the past tense, and always in a quiet, reserved voice, and it wasn’t until several weeks into their travels that Bobby learned what had really happened to the love of Alex’s life, and how his best friend would never be the same again because of it. 

“His person,” Reggie repeated slowly, and Bobby could see him connecting the pieces. “His… you mean Willie. You think it’s Willie’s birthday.”

Alex let out a soft, pained noise in his sleep. 

  
Bobby shrugged. “It’s just a guess,” he said honestly. “I have no idea. But if he’s this bad…”

“It probably means something significant,” Reggie agreed, coming around to Alex’s other side to help Bobby support his weight, and now he looked less nervous and more incredibly, deeply sad for his friend. It wasn’t an expression Bobby remembered seeing often on his face, and he hated it more than anything. “We’ve got to watch him, then. Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself, or someone else. Do you think Dante’s old stash of food is still here?”

“Wouldn’t hurt to check,” Bobby said, and together they dragged their friend into the cottage.

~

Alex woke to his whole head being submerged in a bucket of ice water, and came to his senses coughing and spluttering. 

“That’s enough, Bobs,” he heard Reggie say from somewhere behind him. “I think he’s awake now.”

“One more time, just for good measure,” Bobby suggested, and Reggie sighed. 

“No,” Alex croaked, spitting out a mouthful of water. “No, I’m here.”

His memory was hazy; he wasn’t quite sure how he’d ended up in Dante’s squatter hole, with his old friends and crewmates sitting on the floor beside him. He remembered acquiring a bottle of brandy from one of the shadier figures of the Thieves’ Forest and downing most of it in one go. After that, things got a little fuzzy. He thought that maybe he’d fought someone with his sword? He remembered drawing it, anyways. He hoped he’d won, that he hadn’t put Willie’s good name to shame by  _ losing  _ a duel. 

_ Willie.  _

Alex’s chest hurt, and his stomach felt like it was tying itself in sailor’s knots. He thought he might throw up, from the alcohol or the grim reminder of what time of the year it was. Instead, he gritted his teeth and shook his head, sending little droplets of water flying everywhere, and then wiped his eyes. “Hey, fellas.”

Bobby and Reggie both came into view, wearing matching expressions of concern. Well, Reggie looked concerned. Bobby looked mildly pissed off, which Alex chose to interpret as him being concerned in his own way. 

“What happened, Alex?” Reggie asked gently, which was… not a question Alex felt like delving into at the moment. Shaking his head like some kind of wet mutt had been a mistake; his head was  _ pounding _ , and he focused on his own reflection in the tub of water, trying his damndest not to throw up. He looked frightful; his hair was wet and clinging to his face in slimy strands, and the bags under his eyes were as deep and dark as they had ever been.  _ What happened Alex,  _ indeed. He looked like shit. 

“No, first things first,” Bobby said shortly. “Straight to business. ‘Lex, I found your six-fingered man.”

“You did?” Reggie demanded. Alex felt as though all the exhaustion had left his body all at once, and he leaned forward eagerly. 

“Where?” he asked. “How- what did-”

Bobby held up a hand. “The castle. He’s working for Prince Nicholas as his right hand man.”

“The castle,” Alex whispered to himself. All the places he’d checked, all the distant lands he’d traveled to, hoping to find his rival at last, and he’d been holing up in the castle this entire time. Naturally. Alex had hit rock bottom twice now, shacked up with pirates and thieves and all manners of unpleasant creatures, all while battling an addiction to drink and coping with losing the best thing that had ever happened to him, and the six-fingered bastard had been living like royalty. 

“We need to make a plan,” Reggie said. It was clear that in Alex’s post-inebriation state, Reggie was attempting to step forward and be the planner of the group, think things through rationally. It wasn’t his usual role, and he wrung his hands anxiously as he spoke, looking as though he felt wildly out of place. “We can’t just go barging into the castle to murder a man. There will be guards. Isn’t the prince getting married tonight?”

Bobby nodded. “They’re amping up security at all the main entrances to the castle, and they’re going to be on even more high alert than usual. The main access gate alone is going to have at least thirty men standing post.”

“I need to get inside that castle,” Alex said, not pausing to ask how Bobby knew any of this. His heart raced, and he could hear the blood roaring in his ears. For  _ years  _ he had sought out the six-fingered man, desperate to take payment for what had been done to him. For  _ years  _ he had been unsuccessful. And now here he was, not even half a kingdom away from the man who had ruined his life, and he wasn’t going to miss his opportunity again. “I need to get in there  _ tonight.  _ I need to end it.”

“I know, ‘Lex,” Reggie murmured. “Believe me. But we can’t take on thirty men by ourselves.”

“Maybe  _ you _ can’t,” Alex said, in a nasty sort of voice, and felt briefly guilty about the way Reggie’s face fell. He would worry about hurting his friends’ feelings later. Right now, he needed to  _ act.  _

“We need a plan,” said Bobby. “You’re the plan guy, Alex.”

“No,  _ Dante  _ was the plan guy,” Alex said tiredly. “And Dante is dead. So we need to make our own plan. We need someone else, even  _ one  _ more person, who’s skilled with the sword and can help us. Four against thirty is better than three, isn’t it?”

He watched as his friends exchanged a look, Bobby exasperated, Reggie worried, and Alex could feel frustration creeping into his chest. He finally had a lead, for the first time in  _ years _ , on Willie’s murderer, the man who had taken everything from him, and his two best friends in the world were acting like he was being crazy and irrational. 

Maybe he  _ was _ being crazy and irrational; he didn’t much care anymore. He was going to find the six-fingered man, and he was going to kill him. Slowly. Alex would make him pay for what he’d done, if it was the last thing Alex ever did. 

“We could assemble a crew-” Reggie tried, but Bobby waved a hand, suddenly looking much more interested in the conversation. 

“We don’t need a crew,” he countered. “It would take too long, and besides, even one more skilled swordsman is better than nothing, right?”

Alex frowned, unsure of where he was going with this. “...Right,” he said cautiously. 

“ _ So,  _ let’s go find Luke,” he said simply. “He bested you in duel, and he kicked the shit out of me and Reg.”

“I wouldn’t call it-” Reggie began, as Alex protested, “He did not  _ best _ me-”

Bobby held up a hand, and they both fell silent. “My point is, he’s good at what he does. And right now, we need someone good at what he does. There’s no better man to help us plan a castle storm. All we have to do is find him, and we’ve got a better chance at getting to Covington inside the castle.”

“Covington,” Alex said, trying the name out for the first time. It tasted bitter on his tongue. He couldn’t wait to make this Covington character suffer for what he’d done to Alex. What he’d done to  _ Willie. _ “Good enough for me. Let’s go.”

With some effort, he heaved himself to his feet, wobbling a bit, but ultimately standing up straight. His stomach churned dangerously, as if he was about to be sick, but stronger than that feeling was the feeling of urgency- for the first time in years, Alex was motivated to act. 

“Where are we going?” Reggie asked, as he and Bobby stood, as well. 

“To find our man in black, obviously,” Alex said, checking that his sword was sheathed and secure at his side.

“We don’t have a  _ clue  _ where he is, Alex,” Bobby said tiredly. “He could be anywhere right now. Hell, he could be  _ dead  _ right now.”

“Never mind about that,” Alex said, because nothing could dampen his spirits now. “After so long, I’m finally going to be able to get my revenge. Willie’s soul will finally be at peace, which is all I’ve wanted for… since it happened.”

“Alex,” Reggie started, his voice dangerously soft, but Alex didn’t want to talk about his feelings anymore; they couldn't waste any more time. He turned around and strode out of the cottage, a new drive to his movements. One way or another, it was all going to be over tonight, even if he had to die trying.

He stopped once he was outside, breathing in the mixture of woodsmoke and pine coming from the recently vacated forest, and made up his mind.  _ Whatever it takes.  _

_ There will be blood tonight. _

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> willie's my favorite character i promise in future fics i won't murder him before the fic even starts 
> 
> i mean i know he's canonically dead but yk
> 
> in the actual movie it doesn't really tell us how fezzik and inigo know half the shit they know about the castle and how it's being guarded and then like. how fezzik knows about the six-fingered man? or maybe it does and i just wasn't paying attention so. i took some creative liberties and managed to bullshit my way straight through THOSE issues. next!
> 
> if you've made it this far just know: from the bottom of my heart, i appreciate the hell out of you and your comments are making my morning, afternoon, and night
> 
> -b


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Not one pair of people in love, not in a century, has had the chance that you and your beloved have, no matter what the storybooks say." Caleb sneered at him. "And so I think that no man in this entire century will suffer quite as much as you, either.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> good morning clowns, acquaintances, and beloved readers 
> 
> here we go again! i updated the chapter count again because i am inconsistent in everything except my announcements about how inconsistent i am
> 
> tw for this chapter will be in the end notes but let me know if you need anything specific 
> 
> as always, enjoy! here goes nothing
> 
> -b

Julie had been in a state all day. 

It was hard to discern exactly how many feelings were brewing in her chest; she was miserable, of course, at the prospect of a wedding to Nick, who was nice enough but who did not possess her heart and all her love. She was also hopeful that Luke, wherever he was on his ship, somewhere out on the open ocean, would receive her letter. Surely at least one of the four had made it into his hands. He would read it, and come at once, and swoop in at the last moment to whisk Julie away, away from this marriage and this castle, and take her somewhere they could be free and in love without punishment or interference. 

She was also somewhat disappointed in herself; each time a servant or maid hurried past her in the castle corridors with a large bouquet of flowers or a teetering stack of good china plates tucked in their arms and paused briefly to bow and wish her a happy and lasting marriage, Julie wanted to grab them and yell that it was all a lie.  _ I don’t love him!  _ she didn’t say, though she wanted to more than anything.  _ I am not in love with the prince! _

Of course, there was no way anyone in this castle save for Nick and Count Covington and perhaps Nick’s family knew anything about Nick and Julie’s secret arrangement, so Julie merely smiled, dipped her head shyly, and thanked them for their kind wishes. 

  
It would be even more disappointing, of course, if Luke didn’t come to save her and Julie ended up having to go through with the wedding, only to slip off into the night directly after the ceremony. She was sure she would feel guilty about hurting Nick, at least for a while, but she had to convince herself that this was the better option, rather than be tied to a prince she carried no romantic feelings towards for the rest of her foreseeable life. 

It occurred to her, as she walked past the stairwell that would take her to the westernmost parts of the castle, that she ought to check in with Nick, see how he was feeling about the day and its upcoming events. Julie wasn’t the only one getting married, after all; it took two to do that. She doubled back and climbed the stairs, making her way towards Nick’s office, where he would no doubt be finalizing papers and making last-minute decisions about their big day. 

The office door was open, and Julie slowed her pace as she got closer, straining her ears to hear the conversation filtering out into the hallway. One of the voices was Caleb, that much she was sure of. 

“... Need a report,” Caleb was saying. “What is the current status?”

“The forest has been emptied, and all its occupants arrested,” a new voice said. Julie didn’t recognize it: loud, deep, and masculine. It sounded like a voice well accustomed to commanding large groups of people. “Thirty of my finest men are guarding the castle gate.”

“Double it,” Caleb said. “The Prince and his bride must be kept safe, Yellin.”

“With all due respect, my lord,” said the new voice, who was apparently called Yellin. “The gate has but one key, and I carry it around my neck. No one will be entering the castle tonight unless they have both authorization and personal permission from me.”

“I see,” Caleb murmured. “I still think more men would make me feel… more secure.”

Julie stepped forward and knocked lightly on the open door, figuring now was as good a time as ever to make her presence known. A pause, and then-

“Enter,” said Caleb, and Julie pushed open the door the rest of the way and entered. 

“Ah, Lady Julie,” the man called Yellin said, swooping into a bow. “How lovely to see you.” He was tall and sturdily built, with yellow hair and an impressive mustache curling over his top lip. He must have held some sort of ranking, as his guard’s uniform was decked out in all manner of medals. 

Julie nodded politely to Yellin and then turned to Caleb, who did not do her the courtesy of bowing but instead put a truly fake smile on his face and offered his hand, which Julie did not accept. Unfortunately, they were the only two in the room: Nick was nowhere to be found. 

“Where’s Nick?” she asked. 

“Busy,” Caleb replied shortly. “How are you feeling about your… special day, lady?”

He said  _ special day  _ like it was a direct threat, and Julie did her best not to shudder. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Caleb turned to Yellin. “Tonight the prince and his lady get married, Captain, as you well know. Tomorrow, they’ll be escorted by your finest men to the Channel of Florin, where every ship in the royal armada will be waiting to accompany them on their honeymoon.” He looked at Julie, eyes cold and lifeless but so unnaturally bright. “You won’t want to miss it, my lady.”

There was something slightly off about his tone, and it made Julie nervous. Did he know, then, about her plans to run away tonight, should Luke not show up? Did he know she had no intention of staying married to the prince? He had no way of knowing. Right?

Right?

Julie shook her head as if to clear her thoughts and said cooly, “Every ship except your four fastest, of course.”

Caleb frowned, and Julie’s heart began to race faster. “Every ship except  _ the ones you sent to Luke. _ ”

Too late, he schooled his expression into something more pleasant. “Of course, lady. Every ship except those four.”

“Excuse me,” said Yellin, bowing and beginning to retreat towards the door. Clearly, he’d sensed the change in the air, and knew better than to stay in the room for the blowup. Julie watched him go, then whipped back around to face Caleb, rage running white-hot through her veins. 

“You lied,” Julie whispered furiously. “You never sent those ships. Those letters are never going to reach Roberts, are they?”

Caleb’s smile turned rancid. “You make such accusations any louder, and people will begin to question you,  _ Lady Julie.”  _

Julie balled her hands in her fists, willing herself not to cry. She’d cried far too much in the past few weeks, and she doubted Caleb would respond favorably if she started weeping in front of him. 

“He will still come for me,” she said, her voice wavering ever so slightly. “Luke will still come for me, I know it.”

“So confident,” Caleb said, that horrid smile still on his face. “So  _ arrogant.  _ You say such silly things, with so much conviction in your tone. Ah, to be young and foolish again.”

“Love isn’t foolish,” Julie said weakly, tearing her eyes away from Caleb and fixing her gaze on a tapestry on the wall. She could not cry. She would not allow herself to cry. “He’s going to come. You’ll see.”

The truth was, Julie  _ wasn’t  _ confident Luke would come for her. She had abandoned him at the edge of the Fire Swamp, literally leaving him behind in favor of going with Nick back to the castle. She had promised she would come back for him, promised she still loved him, and it had been for a good reason; she didn’t want one of Nick’s guards to shoot him through the heart. 

All the same, Caleb hadn’t sent the letters to Luke’s ship as he’d sworn. If Luke was far enough away, he would have no knowledge of Florin’s events, no knowledge that Julie would be getting married to Nick tonight. 

And if he  _ did  _ know, there was no guarantee he would come for the girl who’d left him behind for a prince. 

“Silly girl,” Caleb scoffed. 

Julie looked at him once more. “Yes, I am a silly girl,” she agreed. “How silly of me to trust that you would do what you said you were going to do. You’re a coward, with a heart full of fear, and I pity you.”

“I would not say such things if I were you,” Caleb said, in a low, dangerous voice, but Julie had had quite enough. 

“I will say whatever I like,” she said boldly. Much too boldly; she was nothing more than a farmgirl until she was officially married to Nick and therefore carried no real authority, but she was tired of Caleb and his sneaking around and ulterior motives that served no one but himself. “You can’t hurt me; Luke and I are in love, and you can do nothing about it. You cannot track it, and you cannot break it, and I will call you a coward as much as I like. You are among the slimiest things to crawl the earth, and you cannot hurt me.”

“ _ I would not say such things if I were you, _ ” Caleb hissed, marching forward and grabbing her by the arm. Julie resisted, but it was pointless; he was much stronger than her, and hauled her out of Nick’s office and down the hallway with ease. 

“I’ll scream,” Julie threatened as she was dragged down the staircase, back to the other side of the castle. 

“You will  _ not _ ,” Caleb said ferociously, and something about his tone was so animalistic and dangerous that Julie was silent for the rest of their descent down the stairs. She didn’t say anything as she was led down the corridor to her own suite, and she held her tongue as Caleb pushed her with a somewhat unnecessary amount of force into her bedroom. She went stumbling to the ground, and Caleb wasted no time slamming the door behind her. 

Julie stayed on the floor for only a second before climbing to her feet, brushing off her dress and wondering if it was worth mentioning to Nick that his advisor and right hand man had as good as threatened her before shoving her in her room and - she tried the handle of her door - locking her inside. 

Probably not. She wasn’t going to be married to Nick for long, anyways. Best not to dredge up nasty accusations on their wedding day. 

_ Their wedding day. _ Julie’s stomach dropped as she remembered that in a very short amount of time, she would be marrying the Prince of Florin, soon to be the King of Florin, and becoming his queen. It still didn’t feel entirely real to her. So much had happened in the past few days alone that Julie hadn’t had time to fully process the fact that there would be a wedding tonight. A wedding  _ she would be participating in _ . She already had her dress picked out and everything. 

Julie sat on the edge of her bed and ran a frustrated hand through her hair and wished with all her might, all her heart, that somehow, impossibly, Luke would come for her. 

She didn’t know what she would do otherwise. 

~

Luke had never been sure how long he was going to live. 

Life expectancy in the town he grew up in wasn’t exactly high; disease took a lot of children before they could walk or talk. Add onto the fact that most of the food shipments they received from Florin were the main kingdom’s rejects, the old or rotted pick of the fruit and meat, and it was probably a miracle Luke had made it all the way through his youth without getting terrible food poisoning. Then Luke had become a pirate, and one with a lot of enemies at that, which significantly raised his chances of getting himself murdered before the tender age of thirty. 

Now, he was being strapped to a Machine and experimented on daily, and if Count Covington’s words were to be believed, he was slowly losing years of his life, one miserable and excruciating session at a time. By his estimation, he’d lost at least seven years by this point, although he supposed it was possible he could have lost count. Even when he wasn’t hooked up to the Machine, his limbs ached with the fire that accompanied the procedure, and his chest seized up at the thought of going through it again. 

He was tied down to the table now, although he wasn’t attached to the Machine. Small comfort; he knew that any moment, Caleb would come in to perform their daily experiment, and Luke’s entire body was already aching at the thought of another round in the Machine. Dante, Caleb’s pale assistant, was sitting at the desk, fiddling with a small ball of some sort, and in the corner of the room, stiff as a board like he was standing guard, was another of Caleb’s assistants, the one with dark hair and sharper features than Dante. Luke hadn’t been formally introduced to this one yet; he kept to himself and only addressed Caleb when absolutely necessary, but Luke could have sworn he’d heard Caleb call this one  _ Michael _ . 

It had been quiet and uneventful in the Pit of Despair all day, but Luke couldn’t let himself relax, already anticipating the agony he would go through once Caleb got down here. 

Dante rolled the ball back and forth on the desk. The dark-haired assistant whose name might have been Michael shifted from foot to foot in the corner. There was no sound except for Luke’s own heartbeat, pounding in his ears. His shoulder ached. His  _ head  _ ached. He wondered when Caleb was coming. If he was even coming today; perhaps his affairs at the castle were keeping him busy. 

No such luck. Almost as soon as he’d had the fleeting, almost  _ hopeful  _ thought that Caleb had forgotten about him and wasn’t coming to torture him today, the entrance to the Pit of Despair flew open with a loud  _ bang  _ and Count Covington himself came storming down the steps. 

He looked  _ furious,  _ face blotchy and red and tiny beads of sweat covering his forehead near his hairline. He also appeared to be out of breath, as if he’d run here. Luke couldn’t picture the count, dignified and prideful as he was,  _ running  _ anywhere. Perhaps a light jog, or a purposeful march. 

Caleb wasted no time in coming directly up to Luke’s table, leaning in close so that Luke could see every pore on his infuriated face. He wondered what had made the count so angry. He wondered if this meant he was going to take it out on Luke. 

“You truly love each other, don’t you?” he snapped, malice and rage seeping into his tone. “I believe that, and so I believe you could have been  _ truly fucking happy  _ with each other.”

_ Julie, _ some distant, distracted part of Luke’s brain thought.  _ He’s talking about Julie. _

Luke wanted to ask how she was, where she was, if she was still getting married to that prince - or worse,  _ had she already gotten married? _ Luke desperately tried to retrace the days in his head, counting them, but all the torture had made his head foggy, and he had no clue what day or even month it was. Hell, maybe he’d been down here years.

Caleb wasn’t done, however, and leaned even closer into Luke’s space even as Luke watched him attempt to control his breathing. Maybe he  _ had  _ run here. “Not one pair of people in love, not in a  _ century,  _ has had the chance that you and your beloved have, no matter  _ what  _ the storybooks say. And so I think that no man in this entire century will  _ suffer  _ quite as much as you, either.”

Luke didn’t have time to prepare himself in any way, not to brace his arms against the restraints or clench his jaw or any of his usual preparations, before Caleb was striding over to the Machine and pulling the lever, not to rest at  _ One _ as he had done so many times before, but all the way to the top, where Luke could only guess what the label read. 

At the desk, Dante yelped in alarm and leapt from his seat. “My lord,  _ not fifty! _ ”

Luke swallowed hard, said a word his mother would have backhanded him for, and wondered what death was going to feel like.

And then the pain hit, and Luke Patterson knew no more.

~

Alex hadn’t figured out yet how they were going to find Luke. 

So far, he’d been riding on a combination of an educational guess and a simple gut feeling that Luke was somewhere in Florin. His logic went like this: Luke obviously had an interest in Julie Molina, who was soon to be wed to the future King of Florin. Dante’s crew had been hired to kidnap and possibly murder the soon-to-be queen and begin a war between nations, but Luke had swooped in independently and stopped this from happening himself. Alex had suspected at first that Luke had turned full pirate in the time since he’d seen his best friend last and just wanted the girl as his own prize, but as more time went on, Alex found himself doubting this more and more. 

For one thing, Luke hadn’t made any move to kill or otherwise hurt Julie; in fact, he’d seemed concerned with her own well-being. Alex knew from the gossip that traveled like wildfire through the Thieves’ Forest that the future queen had been returned to the castle unharmed, and so Alex suspected that after Luke had kidnapped Julie, he’d simply… given her back. 

But Alex also knew that the six-fingered man, Covington, who had killed his love and ruined his life, was lurking inside the castle as the prince’s right hand man, and that he wouldn’t have let Luke just drop off Julie and then vanish into the night. No, he would want to make Luke pay, to set an example for anyone who tried to uproot, kidnap, or otherwise harm the royal family. Therefore, Luke would still be in Florin, close enough so that the count could keep an eye on him while also teaching him a no doubt painful and traumatizing lesson. 

Alex also had a hunch that Luke’s feelings for Julie ran deeper than a simple desire to do the right thing and return Julie to her fiance. He’d grown up with the man, for goodness’ sake, and he knew what lovesickness looked like on him. Luke had left the little town they had all grown up in at the tender age of sixteen, to apprentice for a farmer and begin learning what it took to run a farm himself, and Alex suspected…

Well. Alex suspected that Julie and Luke had a history. 

Even  _ more _ reason for Covington to keep Luke close. He wanted to make him suffer, as he wanted to make all young fools in love suffer. He’d certainly made Alex’s life a living hell, and there was no doubt in Alex’s mind that the things he was putting Luke through, perhaps at this very moment, were just as painful. 

Hell, Alex wondered if Luke was even still  _ alive.  _

As he laid all this out for Reggie and Bobby as they made their way out of the Thieves’ Forest and into the main kingdom of Florin, which was bustling with people hurrying this way and that, preparing for the celebration that was to come after the prince and Julie were married tonight, he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that they might be searching for a dead man. 

When he said as much, Bobby tilted his head, seeming to consider it. “I mean,  _ maybe, _ ” he allowed. “But this bastard likes to drag out his punishments, doesn’t he? He’ll torture Luke until he gets tired of him,  _ then  _ kill him. We’ve still got a shot.”

“Aren’t you just a ball of joy today,” Reggie grumbled, hitting shoulders with a random passerby as the three of them attempted to navigate the packed streets. 

Alex was silent for a moment, wishing Bobby hadn’t said anything, because now all he could think of was Willie, alone and at the mercy of Covington, being tortured long and hard enough to produce all the blood Alex had found when he’d awoken and then being dragged off to be murdered. 

_ He deserved better,  _ Alex told himself fiercely.  _ And I’m going to avenge his good name, and make Covington pay for what he did to him.  _

The thought calmed him, if only a little. 

A hand suddenly landed on his shoulder, and Alex started despite himself, but it was only Reggie, frowning at him in his patented concerned-best-friend look. “How are you?” 

Alex wanted to laugh, but he figured that wouldn’t help anyone feel better about his own mental state. “It’s going to be over soon,” he said instead, which didn’t seem to reassure Reggie, but he dropped his hand. 

“Can’t move in this damn crowd,” Bobby growled. It was true: they were shoulder-to-shoulder with what felt like every citizen in the kingdom, everyone pushing past each other and jostling others in their haste to get to their destinations. It was a madhouse, and Alex could feel his chest beginning to tighten; he’d never liked large crowds. 

Reggie must have heard his breathing start to speed up, because he said, “Bobby…”

Bobby didn’t need to ask. He drew his sword and hollered “ _ EVERYONE OUT OF THE WAY! _ ” in his most aggressive (and  _ loud _ ) voice.

It worked like a charm; the crowds split around them almost instantly, and suddenly the pressure in Alex’s chest loosened as the throng of people did the same. The three of them made their way across Florin’s main marketplace without incident, and Alex’s head was clear to begin strategizing again. 

“I’m thinking he’s either in the dungeons, or someplace more private. Someplace only the count knows about,” he said. They made their way through the main city and past the winding road that led to the castle, and now they were entering the wooded area on the other side of the kingdom, where delivery wagons for the castle generally traveled. 

“Alright, so we find someone who works for Covington,” Bobby said. “I’m sure he’s got little weasels working for him; we’ve just got to ask one of them where he keeps his prisoners.”

“And how do you suggest we find one of them?” Alex asked pointedly. “They all work in the castle if they work for Covington, and unless one of you has been hiding a servant’s uniform up your ass this entire time, we aren’t getting into the castle uninvited.”

“We could always ask him,” Reggie said, and Bobby and Alex both followed his line of sight to find a man, short and pale, wearing a servant’s uniform and pushing a wheelbarrow with some obvious difficulty through the woods. The front wheel kept getting caught on gnarled roots and slight divots in the ground and all other manner of obstacles, and the man didn’t appear to be particularly strong to begin with. 

“Hello, there,” Reggie called. “Can I help you with that?”

The man whipped around, an expression of sheer terror on his face, and stuttered out, “No thank you!” He continued to try to push the wheelbarrow forward -  _ try  _ being the operative word. 

“You wouldn’t, by any chance, work for a man named Count Covington, now would you?” Alex asked, adjusting his walking speed so that he was right beside the pale man as he struggled with the wheelbarrow. 

“I don’t think- I mean, there is a Count Covington who works in the castle, but I wouldn’t exactly- I know of him,” the pale man stammered out. The poor thing was turning quite pink in the face, although whether it was from the exertion of physical activity or the sheer guilt of lying, Alex wasn’t sure. 

He drew his sword and pointed it at the pale man’s throat, causing him to stop in his tracks. “How well would you say you know him, exactly?”

“I work under him,” the man stammered. “He has a title; he’s a count. All the servants in the castle are required to do as-”

“I don’t give a damn about  _ all the servants in the castle, _ ” Alex snarled, pressing the point of Willie’s sword into the man’s throat and relishing in the way it made him gulp nervously. “I want to know about you, personally. Do you know where Covington keeps his prisoners?”

“Alexander Mercer,  _ where are your manners? _ ” Reggie snapped, tugging his arm away so that his sword was no longer pressed against the pale man’s skin. He kept it drawn, however, and aimed at the man’s chest. 

“Mercer?” the man asked, as if trying to clarify something in his head. 

“My father’s name,” Alex replied, lip turning up into a sneer. He didn’t much care for his father, but when he and Willie had begun living together, Willie had approached him one day and shyly asked if he could take Alex’s last name, and Alex had been helpless to refuse him. He’d liked his last name then. He had no love for it now. “What about it?”

“You’re supposed to be dead,” the pale man said, and Alex shrugged. There were plenty of people who wanted him dead, and he almost said as much, but Reggie cut him off.

“Terribly sorry about him,” Reggie said, with a smile like the sun at midday. “He’s very hungover, you see. We were just wondering if you could let us in on where, exactly, we might find a pirate? He goes by Luke, dressed all in black, infuriating little ponytail in his hair…?”

“I can’t help you,” the pale man bit out, and Reggie sighed. 

“So much for the bad guy, good guy approach,” he said. “Bobs, jog his memory.”

“With pleasure.” Bobby drew his sword and adjusted the hilt, a familiar sight at this point, and hit the pale servant over the back of the head with it. The man crumpled to the ground instantly, unconscious. 

“Don’t  _ knock him out! _ ” Reggie cried. “Now he can’t tell us anything!”

“Sorry,” Bobby muttered, although he didn’t sound very sorry. “He was getting on my nerves.”

Reggie let out an exasperated noise, and Bobby’s expression turned a tad more sheepish. 

“Alright, let’s figure out what we can until he wakes up,” Alex said reasonably. “He was having a significant amount of trouble with that wheelbarrow, but he wasn’t sweating, so we can only assume he started somewhere near here.” He began to retrace the pale servant’s steps, leading back into the forest, where the trees became twisted and merged together so that they looked like mutant beasts. “And there aren’t any recorded establishments or buildings out here, so we can only assume the place he’s coming from is secret.”

“Which would explain why he looked so panicked to see us,” Reggie said with a nod. “There’s something out here that his boss is trying to keep hidden.”

“Do you think it’s a secret chamber of some sort where he keeps his prisoners?” Bobby asked. “Some sort of under-the-radar hideout where he can do as he pleases to them without legal or political consequences?”   
  


Alex shrugged. “It makes sense. We just need to find out where the entrance is.”

Bobby began stomping his foot experimentally, testing the ground for any tunnels or passageways, while Reggie searched the surrounding foliage for anything that might look suspicious. Alex, for his part, examined the trees, sure there was something in their gnarled and twisted appearance that he was missing. 

A yelp sounded from across the clearing, and Alex looked up to find Reggie jumping back from one of the trees in shock. 

“I was just resting my arm against it,” he said defensively, as Alex and Bobby came over to investigate. “I wasn’t expecting it to  _ move! _ ”

Sure enough, the inside of the tree had rolled away, revealing a staircase that led down into an underground room of some sort. Bobby let out a  _ whoop  _ of delight and threw an arm around Reggie, which Reggie seemed plenty pleased about, and Alex settled for grinning at his best friend. Leave it to Reggie to find  _ exactly _ what they were looking for, entirely on accident. 

There was a long moment, then, where the three of them stood at the entrance to the secret chamber and just looked at it, until finally, Bobby broke the silence with a, “So.”

“So,” agreed Alex. “Onward, then?”

“Onward,” Reggie repeated, and Alex took this as his cue to lead the way and start descending the steps. Part of the way down, he realized how likely it was that they were walking into a room potentially filled with hostiles; he drew his sword before he reached the bottom, and could hear the sounds of Reggie and Bobby doing the same behind him. 

He needn’t have worried; the chamber that the stairs opened up to was empty save for one person, lying on a table off to one side and obviously in no state to be getting up and fighting them. The room was windowless, and the only light source came from a few torches placed in sconces along the walls, so it was difficult to make out, but as they neared the unconscious figure on the table, it became clear that it was Luke. 

He was pale as the grave, lips colorless and slightly parted. He wore no shirt, and in various places along his bare chest and arms were marks that looked somewhere between burns and bruises. Thick bonds tied him down to the table, as well, and Alex noted the deep bruises along his wrists that made it clear that he’d tried to break free with no luck. 

Alex was relieved to have found Luke at last, but his gut twisted to see his friend in such a state. Whatever he had been through, it had obviously taken a lot out of him. Luke looked as though he was on death’s door. 

Just another reason Alex was going to murder Covington, and make the man pay for his crimes. 

Reggie whispered, “Oh, Luke…” as Bobby got to work attempting to slice through the ropes tying their friend to the table. Alex, at a loss for what else to do, reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair off Luke’s forehead, then felt at his neck to check his pulse. 

He froze, because his fingers were not finding a steady beat where they should have been. Somewhat frantically, he leaned his head down to rest on Luke’s chest, seeking out the steady  _ ba-bump  _ of his heartbeat. 

Instead, he was met with a hollow and final-sounding silence. 

“Guys,” Alex choked out. “His heart’s stopped.”

Bobby stopped his attempts to free Luke at once, head jerking up in alarm. “What?”

Reggie was suddenly at Alex’s side, gently moving him over so he could have a turn feeling for Luke’s heartbeat. Alex could see the moment it dawned on Reggie that there was no pulse coming from Luke’s body. 

“I think you’re right,” he said, in a hushed voice. “We’re too late. He’s... dead.”

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (tw for this chapter: major character death, a character getting knocked unconscious, mentions of torture)
> 
> this chapter is called Get His Ass, Julie (F In The Gamer Chat For Luke)
> 
> three cheers for finally using the fic title in the fic! sorry the six-fingered bastard man got to be the one to say it but we can't win every time 
> 
> i edited and posted this chapter while drinking a homemade coffee out of a starbucks cup with a dunkin straw, if you're wondering how this semester is going just like in general
> 
> sorry i'm shit at responding to comments but just know that i see each and every single one of them and they make me :) at my screen so. appreciate y'all. 
> 
> stay tuned. lesbians next chapter. the end is in sight. 
> 
> -b
> 
> (EDIT: GO INTO THE COMMENTS OF THIS CHAPTER AND READ RAINY'S DRABBLE BECAUSE HOLY SHIT DUDE I'M SITTING HERE WITH MY MOUTH OPEN)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! kudos and comments are always appreciated if you liked it (or if you didn't)
> 
> i'm @chandclicrsandcaviar on tumblr come holler about this ghost show with me


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